


We'll Burn That Bridge When We Get There

by lucyrne (theungenue)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ableist Language, Corpses, Explicit Language, Firewatch au, Implied One-Sided Sheith, M/M, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Nature, Paranoia, Slow Burn, Suspense, Unresolved Sexual Tension, spoilers for Firewatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7796014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theungenue/pseuds/lucyrne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FIREWATCH AU. After Keith’s mentor and best friend goes missing, he quits the Garrison to become a fire lookout at a remote national park. Keith’s quest for some peace, quiet and personal reflection is muddled by Lance, his new boss that can’t quit babbling to him through a handheld radio.</p><p>Despite their rocky start, Lance becomes Keith’s sole emotional lifeline in the wilderness. When he discovers evidence that someone is watching them from the shadows, Lance is also the only one Keith can trust...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for Voltron and for Klance. This AU is based on Firewatch, one of my favorite video games, but the plot will diverge in some key ways. Hopefully, fans of both Voltron and Firewatch will enjoy this slow burn, suspense fic. 
> 
> I look forward to updating this fic and receiving feedback.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith arrives at Altea National Reserve to begin his summer as a fire lookout.

No one was there to greet him when he finally arrived at the small rest stop at the park’s edge in his used truck. Keith stepped out of the driver’s seat, swung his backpack over his shoulder, and let the car door fall shut. He left the keys inside; someone would be coming along to collect and store it until his return at the end of the summer.

Keith eyed his surroundings--tall redwood trees, bright green leaves, towering cliffs, a stunning blue sky--and steeled himself. He had an eight mile hike ahead of him just to get to the lookout. Once there, he had three months to spend surrounded by trees and rocks, completely cut off from civilization and all of the shitty people in it.

The Altea Nature Reserve was a sprawling park of forests and canyons located in wildfire territory. A fire lookout’s job was pretty self-explanatory: keep an eye peeled for wildfires and make sure visitors don’t accidentally start one. It was a well-paying gig that didn’t require any special degrees or experience. Just three months of self-imposed exile. 

After what went down at the Garrison, Keith had nowhere to go. So nowhere was exactly where he went.

He took out his map, a confusing document of swirling contour lines and faded ink, and found the dirt path that would eventually lead him to Red Lion Lookout--his new home for the rest of the summer. Beside it was a wooden bulletin board covered in bleached posters bearing slogans like, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” and “Fireworks are ILLEGAL within park bounds!” Keith flicked a peeled corner on the fireworks poster and set out down the path. 

Though he knew that eight miles wasn’t that long a hike, it felt endless. Dappled sunlight filtered through forest canopy gave way to rocky inclines. Small cliffs blended into lush rivers and animal tracks. Terrain that changed around every corner stretched out Keith’s sense of time. After an hour of walking and climbing, he spotted a stag grazing by the path. It must have heard or smelled his presence, but it remained unmoved. 

Sweat collected underneath the tufts of hair at the nape of his neck. The employee manual suggested getting a haircut and shaving before starting as a fire lookout. Keith didn’t bother. If his long black hair grew out, what did it matter? The point of solitude was to be by his goddamn self. It wasn’t like the redwoods could comment about his appearance. 

The thought was freeing. For the first time since he could remember, Keith wasn’t beholden to anyone. He could feel his memories of the Garrison--of Shiro--dropping away like left behind luggage. Baggage from another world to be claimed at another time.

He arrived around dusk. Red Lion Lookout looked the same as the fire lookout on the cover of the employee manual. It was a square structure on 40 foot high stilts with large glass windows on every wall. Unlike the manual, this tower had a bright red roof. Easy to spot from far away. A small shack Keith believed was an outhouse and shower stood off to the right of a narrow staircase twisting around the structure’s legs. He climbed the wooden stairs, paying no heed to their creaking and sighing. 

The lookout appeared bigger from the inside, but only just. It had all the essentials--a bed, sink, stove, desk. Four lightbulbs attached to the ceiling. A box of leftover canned food and linens from the former lookout, plus a plug-in fan and an empty journal. In the middle of the room, a strange metal cylinder with a map was fastened to the floor. 

Keith dropped his backpack on the floor, kicking up a small storm of dust. Home sweet home.

Before he began to unpack, something on the desk caught his eye. It was a handheld radio and a sloppily scrawled note that said, “CALL LANCE FOR TRAINING.” His boss, perhaps?

The radio was a small, red device that neatly fit in the palm of Keith’s hand. The brand name BAYARD was inscribed in white along the side, and the buttons to adjust the volume and open transmission were arranged in a neat row. 

He held the radio to his mouth and pressed his thumb on the transmission button. “Keith Kogane, reporting for duty.” He winced at his own words. Old habits die hard. Keith waited a moment before continuing more casually. “Is anyone there? I just got here and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.”

The radio’s speaker exploded with static as someone adjusted the frequency and volume of the channel. 

“Hey fresh meat!” a cheerful voice said through the radio. “Welcome to Red Lion Lookout. My name’s Lance, and I’ll be showing you the ropes. Or dictating them. Whatever. Anyways, do me a favor and look out your northern window.” Keith crossed the room, still holding the radio to his mouth. The sun had set hours ago, so he squinted over the treetops. “See that mountain? See the little box perched on the cliff? Where the cablecars end up? Wave!”

Keith raised a hand in that direction. The small, silhouetted building peeking through the trees must be the lookout tower where Lance was stationed. It didn’t seem so far from this altitude, but on foot it would take hours to reach.

“You waving yet? You waving? See me waving? You see me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m waving,” Keith responded. In truth, he could barely see the tower at all, let alone the lookout inside.

“Good. If there’s ever a natural disaster, alien invasion, or some other calamity, everybody gets on a cablecar and reports here to Blue Lion Lookout for extraction. Because I have access to the park helicopter pad.” Lance sounded very pleased with this fact. “Or, if you need rescuing, I’ll swoop in and save you. I’m sort of an ace pilot, no big deal.”

“Got it.”

There was a lull on the other side of the line. “Cool,” Lance finally said. “So new guy, what are ya running from?”

Keith narrowed his eyes, and frowned in the general direction of Blue Lion Lookout. “Why do you think I’m running from anything?” 

“C’mon. No one takes this job unless they have some tragic backstory. I just want to see how your trauma compares to the other lookouts at Green and Yellow.” 

“Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have much of a backstory,” Keith answered. “I’m just a Garrison burnout looking for some fresh air. That’s all there is to it.” Keith placed the radio in its charger, satisfied that the conversation was finally over. Five minutes talking to that guy made three months of total quiet sound heavenly. 

But to assume that Lance was done talking was too optimistic. 

“Wait a second, you’re Keith? From the Garrison? Garrison prodigy Keith?” Lance asked. “No. No, no, no, no, no. First you overshadow me in pilot school, then you show up at freaking Altea to ruin my summer gig?”

Keith had come to this park to live in this stupid tower so he could escape the Garrison and all its memories. Some asshole dredging it back up again was irritating, but that same guy having the gall to say Keith was ruining _his_ summer? He snatched the radio off the receiver. 

“What the hell is your deal? I don’t even know you,” Keith said into the radio.

“He doesn’t know me he says, what the hell is your deal he says! We were in the same Garrison entry class. You got the only fighter pilot position, and I got put in cargo. _You’re the cause of my tragic backstory!”_

He felt a twinge of sympathy, but a twinge wasn’t nearly enough for Keith to back down, not when he was this keyed up. “You sucking at flying isn’t my problem.” 

“I’ll fly the chopper down there and make it your problem!”

Keith smiled that cocky, shit-eating grin that often got him in trouble at the Garrison. “So that’s where your second-rate cargo piloting license got you. The emergency airlifter at a national park in the middle of nowhere.”

“Look, systemic job security in the freight and shipping industry is nothing to joke about. And also not my fault. Not that it matters since I’m your superior officer now. Ha! Guess we know who the real failure around here is.”

Keith’s jaw tightened. He replaced the radio in its charger, because no way did he come here just so some cargo pilot could mouth off at him. He unzipped his backpack and started unpacking his possessions and wiping the dust off the counters. The large windows on every wall grew opaque as dusk gave way to night. 

“Hey Keith? You there?” Keith didn’t even look at the radio. He took his knife out of his pocket and rank his finger along the smooth metal. “Sooooo, uhhhh, I guess we’ll put off training until tomorrow. Lance, out.” Lance’s voice crackled through the speakers before it went silent. 

Keith fell asleep that night to the rhythmic whirring of cicadas and the rustling of leaves.

He slept in the next morning and missed the sunrise. The pillow provided in the lookout was a bit musty for his taste, but it was nothing he couldn’t get used to in time. And he had all the time in the world. 

The day was spent getting the lookout tower in order. Keith swept the room, cleaned out the outhouse, cleared spiderwebs out of the shower. Many hours were lost washing windows so that Keith could feasibly see the outside and repairing the analogue clock on the wall. He swore the second hand ticked too slowly, but had no other clocks to compare. The one thing he didn’t touch was the round thing in the center, which looked like some sort of official equipment. 

Keith scribbled a small entry in the empty journal on his desk.

**Day 1**

**First day on the new job, no fires spotted. Yet.**

He read over his handiwork and felt that the content was a bit thin. If Keith was just going to record whether or not he saw any fire, he’d never write anything at all. He tapped his pen on the paper a few times. Cautious, he wrote ‘Shiro,’ only to immediately cross it out. It turns out he wasn’t quite ready to dive into his past either. Recording fires would have to do. 

Lance didn’t check in again until late afternoon. 

“Hello?” Eyeing the radio sitting in its charger, Keith didn’t move to answer it. He heard Lance sigh. “That’s what I thought. Look, I don’t know if you’re there, but here goes. Sorry for the questions and accusations and all that. I obviously crossed a line or struck a nerve...somewhere. So, yeah, sorry. I’ll drop in again in an hour to repeat all that, in case you’re out.” The line went dead. 

It wasn’t much of an apology, but it was more than Keith had expected from Lance. He let the silence lie between them for a while before getting up to answer. 

After clearing his throat, Keith reopened communications. “I guess if we’re working together for the next three months, we might as well try to get along.” Keep it professional. In the very least, Lance would give Keith something to fill up the lonely hours in his tower.

Lance’s sigh of relief fuzzed the audio. “Good to hear. There’s all this other crap I’m supposed to teach you, and the silent treatment would have made that kinda hard.”

“Let’s just get it over with.”

“Uh, sure. Alrighty, see the contraption in the middle of the room? That’s called the Alfor Fire Finder.”

Lance was talking about a circular topographic map attached to a cylinder as tall as Keith’s waist. Two sights stood parallel on with side of the circle. They reminded him of the scope of a gun, but more primitive. The Garrison budget was in a very different league than the National Park Service. Learning to do things without a computer’s help was a part of the job.

Keith vaguely heard a popping sound behind him, but he was too fixated on the fire finder and the sound of Lance’s voice to notice. “If you see smoke, this little buddy will help you locate the source, even in the dark. Pretty handy. Okay, let’s start by looking at the--the fuck? I mean, just move the--Shit!”

“What?” 

“Eastern window. Now.”

Keith spun for a moment before figuring out which window pointed east. He crossed the room and looked outside. A stream of smoke rose from the trees. He heard a crack, and a firework whistled through the air and towards the sky. It exploded in a shower of red and blue sparks.

“ _Hell no_ ,” Lance said through the radio. “Keith, you gotta get down there and stop those fireworks. We’re three months into a drought, anything hotter than a fried egg could light up the entire forest if it hits the wrong patch of dry leaves. Looks to me that they’re coming from the lake, around, uhhhh, 43 degrees north, 107 degrees south.”

“How did you---”

“Behold, the power of the Fire Finder! I’ll teach you how to do it on your own later. Get moving!”

Keith nodded once and stopped himself. Gestures and facial expressions were completely lost over radio. “On it.” 

“Make sure you bring your Bayard.”

“My what?”

“Your radio! No point in having an emergency pilot on hand if you can’t tell me you’re in trouble.” Keith grabbed the Bayard radio on the way out and stuck it in his pocket. 

Day 1 of his new job--his new life--was finally giving him something to write about.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Lance's help, Keith navigates his way to the lake to shut down illegal fireworks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason I updated so soon was because this chapter is basically a part 2 to chapter 1. Before I hammer out an update schedule, I want to have the beginning complete and out there for everyone to read. Thanks for the comments so far! I look forward to your feedback :)

With a map in one hand and a compass in the other, Keith navigated his way through the bush and towards the screeching fireworks. According to Lance’s coordinates, they should be found by the lake. 

In his pocket, the Bayard chimed. “The shale drop is the quickest way, but you’ll have to rappel down,” Lance said. Before Keith could answer, Lance anticipated his next question. “The supply cache near you should have rope in it. You’re gonna need it. You have any rock climbing experience?”

“I can wing it.”

“Course you can. I forgot I was talking to Keith, pilot extraordinaire.”

The supply cache was yellow metal box with a latch sealed with a padlock. According to the map, there were at least a dozen of these caches scattered across Keith’s sector, and that wasn’t even including the big communal supply depot marked in the north east. 

The padlock felt heavy in his hand. If he didn’t get the combination, it would be tough to wrench off. So he radioed Lance. “I’m here, but it’s locked,” Keith said. 

“All of the supply caches have the same combo. One-two-three-four.”

Keith’s thumb input the combination, and the lock opened easily. “What genius came up with that? That’s worse than making your computer password ‘password.’” Judging by Lance’s silence, it was his idea. 

The cache did have a pile of moldy rope inside, and Keith threw it over his shoulder. But it also yielded a couple of books, a map updated with local landmarks (Keith input these on his personal map, just in case they came in handy), and a candybar wrapped in a handwritten note. Realizing he hadn’t brought _any_ books and this might be his only shot to have chocolate the entire summer, he stuffed everything into his backpack. Finders, keepers.

Following the map’s guidance, Keith moved out of the copse and to a low cliff. Well, relatively low. Besides the mountains towering in the distance, it wasn’t that high. But looking down from the edge, the bottom of his stomach dropped. 

The last time Keith had felt this tingling in his feet, the lurching in his gut, his jet was nosediving into the sea. Heart thudding, wind whistling, Keith had maintained his deadly trajectory until the very last second, pulling up the nose of his aircraft hard. He had glided so close to the ocean surface that sprays of seawater dusted his cockpit window.

Shiro’s laugh had been crystal clear through his headset. “ _When I told you not to fly too close to the sun, this isn’t what I meant.”_

That particular training session occurred only six weeks before Shiro vanished--and that ambitious, cock-sure version of Keith with him.

A shale drop was no place to reminisce. Steadying himself, Keith tied his rope around a nearby rock and secured it with a carabiner. He was a former pilot, a prodigy. He had fallen from greater heights than this. A stupid rockwall was nothing.

With a firm grip on the rope, Keith slowly started to walk down the rock face, completely parallel to the canyon floor below. After a few steps, he tried to speed up the process by rappelling down. He dropped at least six meters and landed on his feet.

The taut rope twinged. Taking a deep breath, Keith took another jump down. The carabiners held, and his boots made contact with the rock wall again. He was about halfway down. Keith grinned; this wasn’t that hard. He knew he could wing it just fine. The sound of another firework whistled behind him, and Keith took another leap. 

The rope snapped in mid air.

Keith didn’t remember falling. One moment he was suspended in the air, the next his back thudded on the ground, knocking the wind straight out of his lungs. He cried out and rolled onto his side. 

Sure that nothing was broken, only bruised, Keith fished his Bayard out of his pocket. “Thanks a lot for the tip about the rope,” he said through gritted teeth. “You tiny, raging asshair.”

“ _Tiny?_ Son, you don’t even know how tall I am. _”_ Once back on his feet, Keith put away the Bayard again, confident that he wouldn’t need to talk to Lance until this dumb errand was over.

He had never been in anything resembling a canyon before. Flown over them, sure, but he had never before bothered to look down and really look at one. It was like the gods themselves plunged a knife into the earth and dragged it down, gouging a trench that scabbed and split. The setting sun colored the rock a brownish red, like dried blood. Resolute, Keith walked through the center of the open wound. 

All of a sudden the canyon opened up to a large field. The fireworks were coming from beyond the field, past a thick layer of trees surrounding the lake. He was almost there. 

But now that he was out in the open, Keith smelt smoke. His eyes tracked another small trail of smoke rising from a circle of rocks and pile of light grey ash; a messy campfire, completely unattended. He walked over dry grasses and crunchy shrubs to put out the fire himself, and stopped when his foot stepped on something hard. Beneath his boot was a red beer can--one of dozens strewn about the field and around the campfire.

Campers lighting illegal fireworks in a national park was one thing. Campers getting drunk off their asses before lighting said fireworks was another. 

This seemed like the sort of thing he was supposed to report to Lance. “Guess who just found a smoldering campfire,” Keith said to the Bayard in monotone. He kicked the empty beer can. “Aaaand a pile of garbage.”

Lance growled into the radio. “Unbelievable. You better come down hard on those campers for trashing the park.” His irritation wasn’t an act. Lance clearly took his job to defend Altea National Reserve really seriously. It was sort of endearing.

He stomped out what was left of the fire with his boot, kicking up ash and smoke before the embers were snuffed out for good. Nothing too dangerous, luckily. Keith would have to return to the campsite anyway with a trash bag to pick up the cans, but that could wait until after the fireworks were confiscated. He headed in the direction of the fireworks until several items caught his eye.

First it was a girl’s sneaker lying alone in the middle of path. Then it was a pair of cargo shorts and a man’s t-shirt. 

Then Keith spotted the black bra hanging on the branch of a nearby tree. 

Staring at the bra, Keith brought the radio back to his lips. “So, uh, is there any specific procedure for when park visitors are, like, naked?”

“ _WHAT?”_

“It’s not like I can write them a ticket or arrest them. I’m not a ranger.” He groaned when he found discarded panties in the dirt a few yards away from the bra. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Back up. Back _way_ up. Who is naked? Do you see them? Are they cute girls? Guys? This stuff _never_ happens to me. It’s no fair, no fair at all.”

“No visuals yet. Judging by the clothes laying around the camp here, a guy and a girl.” Keith chewed on his cheek. Drunk people were running around the park buck naked, probably to hook up. That wasn’t a situation he really wanted to walk in on. “On second thought, maybe I should wait for them to come back.” 

“Oh no you don’t! I still see fireworks in the sky, Keith. The nearest ranger is miles away, so I’m counting on you. And, uh…” Lance cleared his throat. “Give me updates when you find the streakers. I like to be well informed about these things, being your superior and all. I need to, you know, write up reports with a lot of details, and stuff.”

Keith side-eyed the radio. “You’ve been in these woods for a while, haven’t you? Actually, don’t answer that. Let me live in ignorance.”

He took this job so he could sit on his ass for 14 hours a day, look out a window, and try to forget the sound of Shiro’s laugh amidst ocean waves. Wrangling drunk teenagers definitely wasn’t a part of the plan. What was Keith even going to do when he found them? Give them a stern talking to, like some disappointed parent? 

Of course, this line of thought brought Shiro’s face to mind. Keith physically shuddered to shake the unbearable memory away. 

Running from your past was a good motivator to keep moving forward. So he trudged on, following a winding path through dense thicket until he started to hear faint electronica music. The trees must have muffled the sound, because it grew stronger and louder with every step. 

The Keever brand stereo was a thin tower that came up to Keith’s waist. Its owners--the drunk campers, probably--dug a small pit in the sand so keep the entire device upright. Keith looked out over the lake to find the campers, and was immediately blinded by the sunset glittering off the water. He raised his hand and squinted his eyes to the fireworks’ source.

Bingo. Sort of. 

The good news was that the nude campers weren’t fooling around. The better news was that they were completely backlit by orange sunlight, reducing them to shadowy silhouettes with bright sparklers in their hands. 

Which led him to the bad news: the campers were on a small island in the middle of the lake, out of Keith’s reach. Well, unless he decided to swim. 

Water was never his thing, so he reached for his Bayard. “I found them, but I can’t get to them. And before you ask, I can hardly see them either. There’s not much I can do.” Keith pressed the radio to his ear so he could hear Lance’s response over the pounding music. 

“Soooooo you’re just going to _stand there?”_ Whether he knew it or not, Lance just issued a challenge. Clenching his free fist and setting his jaw, Keith stowed the radio back in his pocket. He had experienced worse shit than this. Two drunk, nude campers was nothing.

Keith cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled across the water. “Hey! Hey you guys! You have to cut out the fireworks!” The music was so loud, he could hardly hear his own words, let alone think. 

At first, the campers didn’t notice him. Then the silhouette sitting on the island--the girl, Keith assumed--exclaimed, “Rolo, there’s a pervert watching us.”

“Maybe he wants to come with!” The tall silhouette waved at Keith. “Come on over, we’re getting closer to nature. Light up another, Nyma!”

“No!” Keith called, making an ‘X’ motion with his arms. “You can’t light anymore. It’s really dangerous. I work here, you have to listen to me!”

“Why?” Nyma shouted as she lit another sparkler. The light danced on the water’s surface. “You can’t just stare at us like some peeping tom and order us around.”

Keith flushed with anger. “Listen, I’m warning you--”

“Hear that, Rolo? He’s _warning_ us!”

The two campers threw their heads back and laughed. Back on the shore, he raised a hand to shield his eyes. He wished he had a megaphone so he could yell at them without busting his vocal cords. The music made communication almost impossible. 

He turned to look at the stereo, sitting on the rock, completely unguarded by its owners. Keith had tried to talk things out, and was rebuffed at every turn. It was time to teach Rolo and Nyma that fucking around at Altea National Reserve had consequences. Keith lifted the stereo off its perch from the rock.

Nyma was instantly livid. “Don’t touch our stuff!” she shouted.

“Hey man, put that back!” Rolo said.

Holding the colossal device over his head, Keith deliberately walked to the lake edge. That they were pleading with him to put it back made Keith’s hasty plan feel even more right and sound.

“Whoah, be careful with that.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Stone-faced, Keith dropped it in the water. It floated for a moment before the music came to an abrupt, electric standstill and the entire stereo sank to the lake floor. 

The peaceful silence was brief.

“KEEVER NOOOO!”

“You little shit! We’re gonna sick the cops on your ass for that!”

Keith laughed out loud. What cops? There was no one for miles, save for a couple of fire lookouts stuck in their towers. On the island, Rolo loaded their things into a small boat. Though he couldn’t be sure in this lighting, Keith thought Nyma was giving him in the finger.

“You’re gonna get yours, you son of a bitch!” she said.

“Looking forward to it!” Keith called back. He rubbed his hands together and placed them on his hips. It was only now, flushed with triumph, that Keith considered whether or not he could get in trouble for busting someone else’s property. After all, you get more flies with honey than vinegar. Rolo and Nyma did as he told them, but they weren’t happy about it. 

The Bayard chimed. “Hey, the fireworks stopped!”

It was pride that spurred Keith to respond with a dry laugh and answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a little diplomacy.” Lance couldn’t write him up for something he didn’t know about. “So,” Keith said. “What’s the quickest way back home without climbing back up a canyon wall?”

“Through the cave, I guess.”

Keith spent the next hour wandering the canyon for this supposed cave. Reading a map and a compass was damned hard with dwindling sunlight, and while Lance seemed to know what he was talking about, he wasn’t the best at explaining himself or focusing on a specific subject for longer than twenty minutes. 

Eventually, Keith did stumble inside the cave. Whatever was left of the sunlight guided Keith through a short tunnel that led to a ladder leading out of the ground and onto a new trail. Where the path split, a barred, metal fence and door were installed on the cave walls, blocking all entry from going further inside. Though dark, he could see a corridor descending deep into the rock. 

Curiosity got the better of him. “What’s down here?” Keith asked. His voice echoed into the unknown.

“Down where?”

“Down in the cave. The cave you helped me look for. The cave that will finally lead me back. The cave.”

“Oh right, that cave.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “The main tunnel is fenced off, and the door is locked.”

“The key to that door’s been lost for ages. Supposedly. My theory is that it was locked to keep random campers from spelunking. Those caves are deeper than they look. Plus there’s the paintings.”

Keith squinted through the bars. Sure enough, the walls were covered with colorful archaic paintings of cats. Mountain lions. Those paintings must be the namesakes for the fire lookout towers, or at least a nod to whatever culture drew them in the first place.

“They’re historically significant or something,” Lance continued. “The powers that be don’t want just anybody wandering in there.”

“The powers that--”

“You know, the National Forest Service, the Garrison, the head honchos.” This gave Keith pause. What on earth did the Garrison have to do with Altea National Reserve, or a cave in the middle of nowhere? It was a strange coincidence considering that both Keith and Lance came from the Garrison pilot program. 

Maybe Lance was right when he said that only a fuck up--a person who needed somewhere to run, somewhere to hide--could become a fire lookout. Given his own history, Keith wasn’t surprised that the most qualified fuck ups were ex-Garrison. Were the other lookouts put through the wringer of the pilot program before volunteering to live alone in the woods? So far the record was two for two.

Curling his fingers around the wire, Keith had an idea. “I think I see something,” he said into the Bayard. All alone, he didn’t bother to hide his grin. “Maybe an animal, like a bear or a...AHHHHHHH! OH GOD IT’S GOT ME!” He rattled the door and angled the radio so it would pick up the audio clear as day.

“Holy shit!” Lance screamed through the radio. “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m suiting up, suiting up _right now._ Don’t know how I’m going to land a helicopter in a cave, butI’m coming, I’m--”

Lance stopped when the echos of Keith’s screams became hoots of laughter. He heard Lance swear before chuckling himself.

“Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf?” Lance said. Though a little breathless, he had taken the joke in stride. Lance might turn out to be a cool boss after all. “That’s you now. You’re that boy. Next time, I’m not dropping everything to rescue you.”

Keith leaned against the wall and languidly brought the radio back to his lips. “If I convinced you to try to land a helicopter in here, it would have been worth it.”

Climbing out of the cave, Keith found a winding, uphill path that led back into the woods. The park was just as dazzling in the nighttime as it was during the day. With no lights for miles to pollute the darkness, the sky was a velvety dark blue spotted with bright stars. Breathing in the crisp air, it felt like Altea really could be the sanctuary Keith needed, talkative boss or not. 

“Just so you know, most days here aren’t nearly this exciting,” Lance said through the Bayard. “We’re not going to talk much from here on out.”

As the next 70 days would prove, this was the biggest lie Lance had ever told. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having a disagreement with Lance, Keith needs to decide whether or not to count his boss as a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments so far! They are really encouraging when I hit a snag during chapter drafting.
> 
> I'm getting a lot of comments about not having played Firewatch, so I'm just going to reiterate that you don't need knowledge of the game to enjoy the story. However, some narrative elements of the game may be spoiled in my fic. I just want to make that clear so no one is unhappily spoiled should they buy the game.

**Day 5**

> **Yesterday I went around to all the nearest supply caches and emptied them. I found more books and a bunch of letters dated a couple years back between Shay and some guy. I wonder if Lance knows them?**
> 
> **The books are ok. Not great, but ok. I read a thriller in a single sitting, so that’s something.**
> 
> **It’s hit me how remote Red Lion is. Planes don’t even fly over here. If something happened to me, no one would have any idea. Except for Lance. I guess.**

Lance’s ability to interrupt was supernatural. How else could he have known to start singing into his radio at the very moment Keith had started to write about him?

Keith was sitting at his desk and scribbling in his notebook when Lance started to sing.

“I’m a rocket ship burning through the sky, like a TIGER, defying the laws of gravity!” Lance crooned through the radio.

At the end of the day, Keith thought Lance was cool. Maybe not someone he would have befriended during his old life, but he knew how to spin a good tale and tell great jokes. A talented singer, too. The trouble was that if he let Lance carry on like this, the verses of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen would echo in Keith’s head for the rest of the summer.

“Two hundred degrees! That’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit! Travelin’ at the speed of light! I’m gonna make a--”

Staring out the window, Keith reached to his left and picked up the radio. “Two hundred degrees isn’t that hot,” he deadpanned.

On the other side of the line, Lance stopped his singing short. “Maybe your mullet can withstand extremely hot temperatures and still maintain its volume, but the rest of us agree that 200 degrees is intense.”

“The song says he’s traveling at the speed of light and _burning_ through the sky. At that speed, Mr. Fahrenheit or whatever should be producing way more heat than 200 measly degrees.”

“So? Two hundred degrees is still pretty damn hot.”

“It’s not even hot enough to boil water.”

“You’re overthinking this on purpose.”

“The song is bad, Lance. It’s a bad song.”

“How about you insult Freddie Mercury to my--ugh, hold on.”

Keith waited for the beep to signal that Lance had gone offline. Instead, his voice returned. It was distant and casual, but still indisputably Lance.

“Hey. Yeah, I passed along the message.” There was a pause. Lance was listening to someone on another radio channel, but his mic was still hot. Keith slowed his breathing and remained still so he could listen. “Nah, he doesn’t suspect a thing. He’s a few toppings short of a margherita pizza, ya know?” Another pause, then a huff of indignation. “You eat what you like, and I’ll eat what I like! Uh huh. I’ll let you know when I’ve got an update. Buh-bye.”

Lance stopped speaking through that channel, but he didn’t return to talking to Keith either. That silence was all Keith’s imagination needed to run wild and remember.

When Shiro never returned from his mission, Keith heard a lot of people talk about him as if he never lived at all. At the Garrison. At the hearing. At the memorial. Dozens of people who saw his life as something to dissect and discuss. _What a waste,_ they had said. _He was a good officer. His protege Kogane isn’t taking it well._

In those early days, oh God, Keith wanted to fade away too. He wanted to vanish and to have all of his mistakes evaporate into thin air. But he also wanted to be heard, to be acknowledged by someone who understood where he was coming from, someone who knew that he was not just a loose cannon. The clashing desires to disappear and loudly exist didn’t pair well, so his healing was slow-going.

Time felt different in Altea. Less than a week had gone by, but he felt completely at ease talking to Lance. Like they were friends.

And that’s what made Lance’s conversation behind Keith’s back feel like betrayal.

“What was that about?” It sounded like an accusation, but Keith didn’t care. “‘He doesn’t suspect anything, I passed along the message’...Was that about me? Did you just compare me to a pizza with no toppings?”

Keith stared at the radio, waiting for his boss to provide an explanation or an excuse for his bizarre, suspicious conversation. Instead, Lance sighed heavily into the Bayard. “Listen. There’s something I’ve got to tell you. Something about this park.”

He lurched forward and adhered the radio to his ear. “What? What is it?”

“This park...the entire thing...is…” Lance’s voice became a feathery whisper as he inhaled deeply. “ _Outside._ There’s so much of it Keith, so much that we need, like, at least four or five fire lookouts to keep tabs on it. I don’t want to freak you out, but I think the outside _spreading._ We’re never going to escape! _”_

Feeling like a fool made Keith even more defensive. “Alright,” he snapped. “You can quit it with the sarcasm.”

“You can quit eavesdropping and then acting like I murdered the family cow.” A serious, tight edge seeped into Lance’s upbeat voice. “I get that you’re some mysterious ex-pilot with deep, hidden feelings and all that, but guess what? I’m not just a voice over the radio. I have my own shit to do. And sometimes, I talk to people who _aren’t you._ Screw it. Don’t call me unless it’s important.”

The channel cut out. Keith stared at his Bayard in stunned silence. Lance was genuinely angry with him. What was it that pissed him off? That Keith had taken advantage of his trust? Or that he _had_ been talking about him and didn’t expect Keith to call him on it?

Whatever the case, it wasn’t Keith’s job to keep Lance happy. He was here to look out for fires, not banter with some guy who told poor jokes and sang bad songs. If Lance wanted to stew in his tower, he could go right on ahead. He could wait all summer for a damn apology, that was for sure.

Instead of mulling over Lance, he turned to a new mystery: Shay.

So far, Keith had discovered three handwritten letters from Shay, an individual he guessed was another park employee, inside the nearest supply caches. The notes were possibly out of order, and they never included any responses from whoever she was writing to. All he could really tell with certainty was that she was lonely.  

> _H, You were right, the lookout is empty! I guess they couldn’t take it anymore and bailed. They left most of their things behind, so I stashed the best stuff in every cache i could find. I even found one of the candy bars you like._
> 
> _We should meet up again at the Spot!_
> 
> _\- Shay_
> 
> _Hey H, My brother was asking about me again. I came here to get space and experience new things. I wish he understood that like you did._
> 
> _Did you hear about what happened up at Balmera? The rangers seem mad. I probably overdid it. Too bad you couldn’t make it though. That would have been a huge help._
> 
> _\- Shay_

The last letter didn’t include any headings or signature. He knew it was from Shay because it was written with the same curly handwriting.

 

> _I wish we had radios that didn’t suck. It would be so much easier to get a hold of you. Hope I see you at the Spot._

Keith absentmindedly ran his finger along the plastic edge of his Bayard. He was lucky to have a functional radio that put him in instant contact with another human being. It took him less than a week to ruin it.

Technically Keith had the same schedule everyday--sit in his tower and watch out for fire--but maybe he could squeeze in an outing to visit more supply caches and find more letters from Shay, or maybe even locate ‘the Spot.’ He looked out the window and drank in the mountains, the trees, the clouds. In a place this beautiful, this expansive, Shay’s special Spot could be anywhere.

Any thought on the beauty of Altea and Shay fizzled when Keith’s eye caught a thin trickle of smoke to the southwest. Fire?

Since that eventful first day, Lance had instructed Keith on how to use the Alfor Fire Finder. This time it was harder to figure out than during training because the smoke was so thin. It couldn’t be a full fledged forest fire, just an unattended campfire, like the one Rolo and Nyma left by the lake. If it was really that small, Keith could take care of it on his own without calling in firefighters. Without calling Lance.

The way Bayard sat in its charger, it seemed to be staring at him. Daring him to pick it up. His choices, really, were to leave without the Bayard and take care of the fire, call Lance and ask him to send someone else to take care of it before resuming their silence, or head out and keep Lance--the Bayard, he meant--close during the entire ordeal. In case it was necessary. In case he needed something.

As a pilot, Keith didn’t recall being so dependent on the person on the other side of his radio. Well, unless it was Shiro.

A fire, though small, was burning in the woods. Keith had to act now. He took a deep breath before hitting the transmit button on his radio. “Uh, Lance? I spotted smoke, and I pinpointed it on the fire finder, so now I’m gonna--”

“I see it.” Keith smiled. It hardly took any effort to restore communications. It was like Lance had never stepped away from his end of the radio at all. “What do you want to bet that it’s those assholes again? I’m as big a fan of running around the woods naked as the next guy, but this is getting out of control. Want me to call it in, sick the rangers on them?”

“Nah, the smoke is still thin. I’ll stomp the campfire out myself.”

“Well, you know how to call me if it’s too much for you to handle.”

“Oh, I can handle it.”

Keith threw on his backpack, snatched his Bayard, and headed off.

Distance was impossible to gage at Altea. Up in the tower, the smoke seemed only a short walk away. Once down, it took twenty minutes for Keith to journey back through the cave and end up at the lake. Though it was definitely an improvement on the last time he made that journey, the smoke seemed no closer. He moved south, forging his own path through shaded forest and rocky slopes.

His progress halted when he came to another short cliff. It was about the same height as the shale drop that nearly killed him on day one. Keith opened his backpack to find rope so that he could rappel down the wall, and swore aloud when he realized he had none.

No rope. His options were thus: Jump off a cliff, break his legs, call Lance for backup. Jump of a cliff, miraculously survive, stomp out fire, realize he’s stuck, call Lance for backup. Or don’t jump off the cliff and skip straight to calling Lance for backup.

Every path led to calling Lance to rescue him, something Keith was loathe to do. There had to be another way.

A firm gust of wind blew Keith’s dark hair into his eyes, and between the rustling of leaves and grass, he heard something heavy knock into a branch. He turned and scanned the woods, and seeing nothing, he looked up. A flicker of blue swung from a high branch, almost out of reach. Almost.Keith jumped as high as he could to knock the thing down.

A ratty blue backpack hit the ground with a heavy thump and landed at his feet. Looking up again, he could barely spot the makeshift pulley system that had raised the backpack in the first place. For a tense moment, Keith wasn’t sure about ransacking the backpack. That moment passed quickly. Kneeling, he unzipped the bag and started emptying its contents--a flashlight, undeveloped camera film, some jerky.

A pack of blue nylon rope! Keith held a section of rope in his hands and pulled it taut. This was good, quality stuff. Expensive. Why would a camper string up these supplies on purpose? The backpack’s faded blue fabric suggested that it had been sitting in the sun for months, maybe years.

But Keith was a practical guy, and if some camper was going to abandon their climbing rope, he was going to put it to use. He told Lance so, and grinned when his boss agreed.

“It’s an unwritten rule around here,” Lance said. “If you find free stuff laying around and noone is there to claim it, congratulations! It’s yours. Waste not, want not.”

“I hear that. Thanks a lot…” Keith flipped over the backpack’s name tag. “...Matt Holt.”

He put the radio down so he could empty the backpack’s contents into his own bag. Keith paused when he heard Lance gasp with awe. “Well squeeze my bees and call me Burt. That’s a name I haven’t heard in ages,” Lance said.

 _“_ Burt?”

“No, _Matt_. He and his dad were Garrison scientists who used to work out of the old Black lookout. I met them my first summer, but they up and left without finishing out the season.”

No one had ever mentioned to Keith that there was a fifth fire lookout. He wondered briefly where it was, or whether it was still in use. “Huh. I guess he forgot to get his backpack before leaving.”

“Guess so.” He heard Lance’s small intake of breath, like he was about to say something else, but the comment never came. Keith left Matt Holt’s raggedy backpack by the tree trunk.

He lashed the blue rope to a rock and rappelled down the wall safely. Problem solved. No need for a daring rescue.

The land leveled off and the forest thickened. Keith couldn’t see the smoke anymore through the leaf canopy, but he knew the general direction and could find his way just fine with a compass. He kept an eye peeled for a sign of human life, anything.

He found it hanging from a branch of a dying aspen tree. Gauzy red fabric hung from a skeletal tree branch, drifting in the wind. Unlike the blue backpack, this looked almost new. The edges were jagged and frayed, like it had been ripped with claws. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and it was with creeping, mounting dread that Keith continued.

When he got there, Keith’s first thought was that the campsite looked like a crime scene.

A red, canvas tent was set up in the middle of the clearing. While the frame was intact, the fabric was ripped open at the seams, and the scraps strewn about the clearing. Feathers from a couple pillows covered the ground like melting snow. The scene looked like someone had taken a chainsaw or a sword and started hacking away at everything in sight. The pile of empty beer cans confirmed that this was probably Rolo and Nyma’s stuff. What he didn’t find was Rolo or Nyma themselves.

This was something Lance ought to know. “I found their camp, but no sign of Rolo or Nyma,” Keith reported. “But the place is...everything is shredded. Their tent, sleeping bags, clothes. All trashed.”

Lance was remarkably nonplussed. “Eh, sounds like a bear,” he said. “Maybe a really angry elk.”

At the mention of a bear, Keith wheeled around to survey the surrounding forest. He didn’t spot any bears in the shadows, or animal tracks for that matter. No elks, either.

Keith stomped out the withering campfire, eyes trained on his surroundings for even the slightest movement. Then he tentatively turned his back to the woods to face the tent. He didn’t want a bear to blindside him, but an irrational part of him was also afraid of discovering a body or something in that tent. That’s what he got for reading the thriller he found in that supply cache on day one. Filling his head with ideas about murder and shit.

Of course there was no body or blood inside the tent or inside the abandoned sleeping bag. What Keith did find was a handwritten note on torn paper.

“They left a note.” He plucked the paper from the tent with his free hand and began to read.

“Like a goodbye note? A ransom note?”

“No,” Keith said, eyes slowing seeing red. “It’s about me.” 

> _Dear PSYCHO!_
> 
> _I hope you’re fucking happy, we’re LEAVING and we’re going to find the police and get you arrested for peeping on us at the lake and WRECKING our stuff. By the way, stealing panties is fucking GROSS. Weirdos like you deserve to be locked up, and we’re gonna make sure that happens._
> 
> _I hope it was worth being a jerk over some fireworks. Dick._

As he read the letter over the radio, Lance remained silent, contemplative. Keith, not so much.

“That’s the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Keith said through his teeth. “I’ll cop to ruining a stereo by the lake, but I didn’t do the rest of it. I can’t believe these guys are trying to pin this on me.”

Beneath Keith’s anger stirred fear. The fact that he actually did break their stereo made their story easy to swallow. Lance would probably be mad that he kept the stereo-thing secret. The evidence was stacked against him. Who would take his word over theirs? Especially once the police found out his background at the Garrison--

Lance’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “Yeah, _no._ You’re not getting in trouble for anything. I’m not going to let it happen. So don’t worry that pretty mullet of yours. Lance has it allllll under control.”

Keith felt his own heartbeat pulsing through the palm of his hand and against the plastic of the Bayard. “Thanks for having my back, Lance,” he said, bewildered.

“Don’t mention it.”

With that, Lance launched into another rendition of “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Keith didn’t mind. The summer stretched out before them, the problems of home drifting farther with every sunset, a voice stuck in his head wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

* * *

 

**Day ???**

“Hey. Hey Keith. Wakey, wakey.”

Keith groaned and rolled over. It was too dark to see anything in his tower but the blinking red light of his charging Bayard. Maybe there was an emergency. Maybe Lance had noticed that Keith kept his lights on really late some nights and assumed he was still awake. Or maybe it was nothing. Sleep was too heavy and inviting for him to consider any of these possibilities thoroughly.

“Keiiiith. Get up, get up, get up.”

His body heaved itself out of bed and across the room. When he fell into his desk chair and picked up the radio, he mentally prepared a few diplomatic ways to tell Lance to shut the hell up and let him sleep. “What? What is it?” Keith mumbled, his voice cracked and tired like gravel.

“Keith.”

His breath caught. “Shiro.” Keith stared at the radio, struggling to muster a coherent thought from his exhausted brain. “I didn’t know it was you.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while. How’s Altea?”

Keith looked out the window and saw total blackness. “It’s uh, the same,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“Ah, so you’re bored. It’s not the high-speed thrills you’re used to, but maybe a little monotony is a good thing.”

“Maybe.”

“Lance seems like a cool guy. A good friend.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Am I keeping you up? You should go back to bed.”

“Hmm, sure.”

He dropped the radio and stumbled back to bed. Drifting back into the warm, welcoming arms of sleep, Keith didn’t recall with certainty if that conversation had happened at all.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith discovers a strange fence while out hiking, and he and Lance get closer than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laying on the shippiness thick this chapter without leaving mutual pining territory isn't my greatest strength, but here it is. I really appreciate all of your comments and I look forward to your feedback!
> 
>  
> 
> NOTE: Now that the rest of the story is plotted, I've updated the tags with new warnings. Please take a look at them to make sure this story is still for you.

 

> **Day 22**
> 
> **I’ve been putting it off, but today I’m finally going to collect my stuff from the supply drop. Rangers fly in canned food, fruit, and some other stuff for all of the fire lookouts and rangers about once or twice a month.**
> 
> **~~Shir~~ ~~I’m worried I’m forgetting hi~~ Everything from before is starting to blur together. The clock in my tower doesn’t work right. I don’t know what day of the week it is, or the date. ~~I’ve been dreaming wei It’s just~~ But honestly I don’t care. It’s been a while since I felt this st peace. Isn’t that a good thing?**

“Whatcha look like? I mean, apart from the mullet. Binoculars don’t show a lot of detail, but even I can see that. It’s probably visible from space.”

The supply drop was located north at the halfway point between the Red Lion and Blue Lion lookouts. It was basically a giant dumpster with four compartments inside, one for the Red, Yellow, Green, and Black lookout towers. Blue Lion Lookout apparently was delivered food straight to its doorstep, something Lance made a point to lord over Keith. Instead of being full of garbage, the dumpster contained neat packages of food and supplies. The compartment dedicated to the Black Lion lookout was, of course, empty.

Lance warned him that he might run into the lookouts from the Yellow Lion or Green Lion towers, but Keith was relieved to find that both had already picked up their supplies before he had even got there. He knew very little about the other lookouts except that they were just that-- _other._ Unknown entities. He would rather stick to his territory, his tower, with Lance’s voice as company.

Backpack full to the brim with food, Keth rolled his eyes and responded, “Don’t tell me you’ve harbored an intense grudge against me without even knowing what I looked like.”

“It’s just that I’m trying to draw you, and the chinchilla ears, while cute, strike me as a little inaccurate.”

Keith smiled. How on earth did Lance even come up with this stuff? “Draw me however you want.”

“You will regret giving me that power. So, what color are your eyes?”

“Mauve.”

“What the hell kind of color is that?”

“It’s like purple.”

“Doesn’t sound legit, but ok. Just so you know, mine are _steely._ They can chill your blood with a look. Like a Siberian Husky. _”_

“Now _that_ doesn’t sound legit.”

“I’m serious! Little do you know, you spend all day talking with a bronze paragon of manliness.”

The blue rope, courtesy of Matt Holt, made travel a breeze. Instead of hiking for miles on a marked path, Keith created shortcuts by leaving rope at the top of short cliffs, allowing him to climb up or down at any time. His back ached from carrying his haul of supplies, so he decided to blaze a new route on his map through a nearby valley.

At this point, Lance had moved on completely from Keith’s appearance so he could describe his own. He painted several pictures of his own features in lavish detail, often making reference to celebrities and song lyrics Keith didn’t fully recognize. It was hard to parse the fact from the fiction, not that Keith minded. His eyes weren’t really mauve, anyway.

The path narrowed and sloped downward, disappearing through a thick copse of evergreens. Keith slid down with ease and swatted away tree branches. As Lance made a snide joke about how men and women alike swooned at the sight of him, Keith broke free of the woods.

Only to come face-to-face with a chain link fence.

Thinking of Lance, of what he might or might not look like, Keith almost ran straight into it. A large, industrial fence, blocking the path. Dumbfounded, his eyes sized up the fence from top to bottom. The wall itself was about ten feet tall, but barbed wire wound around the top in loose circles added another foot or two in height. Beyond the fence lay more trees, obscuring what might be within.

Nearly a month into his time as a lookout, it was reflexive to keep the Bayard near his mouth and his thumb on the transmit button. “Uhhhhh…”

“Swooning, huh?” Lance snickered.

“No I’m--I just found a fence.”

There was a brief pause before Lance forced a careless laugh. “So? Biologists like to cordon off patches of land sometimes for science and stuff.”

Keith looked down the length of the fence to the left, and then to the right. The links continued into the distance, a vector of grey and rusty red diamonds that had no clear end in any direction. This was more than a patch of land. He thought briefly of the Holts. They were scientists of some sort conducting research at Altea. Would they have required such a large swath of land for their project?

“That’s not what this is. It’s taller than I am and has barbed wire. It looks like it covers a lot of land. Acres.” Keith swallowed as another thought occurred to him. “The only time I’ve ever seen this type of fence was at a Garrison airfield.”

Lance clicked his tongue. “Huh. No one told me there was a big ‘ole fence out there. What’s on the other side?”

Keith grazed the woven metal with his fingertips. “I can’t tell. Trees are blocking the view.”

“We both spend enough time in our towers to know that there’s no airfield. We would’ve noticed the airplanes whooshing around in the sky.”

“Then maybe the fence is supposed to keep others out.” His fingers curled through the chain links. “Or keep something in.”

“Spooooooooky.”

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t be here for no reason. It must have a purpose. I’m gonna climb over it and check it out.”

As Keith dropped the Bayard and his backpack on the ground, Lance said, “Wait a second...didn’t you just say the top was covered in _barbed wire?”_

In the end, Keith’s attempt to scale the fence ended with a torn sleeve, cut arm, and bruised ego. Lance waxed on about how he warned Keith not to climb the fence, how the barbed wire wasn’t there for decoration, and “that’s how you get tetanus, Keith!” He refused Lance’s offer to be airlifted to the park clinic 12 miles south because he didn’t walk away from the Garrison without learning how to bandage a cut, thank you very much.

Later, when his arm was bandaged and supplies unpacked, Keith took out his map and drew a straight line where the fence blocked his way. He’d find a way over it. It was just a matter of when. 

> * * *
> 
> **Day 30**
> 
> **I used to think the best parts of me were actually the best parts of him. Like they didn’t exist until he came along or didn’t come out unless he was there. Like they weren’t real. But I know that isn’t true. How could it be when I feel just at ease with ~~La~~ someone I’ve never seen face to face?**
> 
> **~~I think Shiro he probably wanted me to think I should have never~~ Is it ~~Shi~~ him I’m missing or the person I remember? Or the way confidence I felt around him? Or the memory of that confidence? **
> 
> **Whatever the case, I don’t miss it so much anymore. Maybe I’m**
> 
> **Holy shit.**
> 
> **FIRE.**

Dark orange flames licked the tree tops and stained the dusky sky grey. It was strange to see brightness and heat on the horizon, pulsing like a beating heart. Forest fires were beautiful when they were still small.

Keith leaned over the railing of his lookout, transfixed. It wasn’t the first time he had ever seen fire before, but it sure as hell felt like it.

“Look at that bad boy.” At the sound of Lance’s voice, Keith retrieved his Bayard from his pocket and looked north towards Blue Lion Lookout. The lights were on, making the blue-roofed tower shine like a beacon in the smoky night. “That must be the biggest fire we’ll have all summer. And you’ve got a front row seat for the entire thing.”

Shortly after he called it in, Lance informed Keith that the rangers weren’t going to put the fire out, not right away. They were going to execute a ‘controlled burn.’ Apparently, allowing a patch of forest to burn away of its own accord was a good way to breathe new life into the park. Give nature a chance to rise from the ashes, so to speak. Soon, a firefighter team would arrive to keep the fire contained.

The idea of a controlled burn--destroying the old to make way for the new--appealed to both Keith’s sense of self-destruction and his burning need to stand on stable ground. To be normal again. Who knew those things could work in tandem? Scorch the earth. Start over. He just had to figure out whether the ‘burn’ part had finished so the ‘growth’ part of his life could begin.

“You discovered it, so you get to name it,” Lance said. That didn’t sound like the correct protocol to Keith, but he said nothing. “Just know that I’ve got some sick suggestions lined up. The Strawberry Rain Fire. The Hyperion Moon Fire. Oh, the Lance Fire, that’s a good one.”

Each and every one of those were terrible. Woe to whoever would one day name their first kid with Lance. Keith pinched his nose and chose the first name to pop into his head.

“I like Burt,” he finally decided.

A peal of laughter echoed through the radio, first in a faint trickle, and then in a joyous crescendo. He had heard Lance laugh before, but not like this. He quietly plotted how to make Lance laugh that way again.

“Burt’s simple,” Lance said as he caught his breath. “Burt’s--it’s good. Okay. Unfortunately, you’ll have to stay up tonight and watch Burt for a while. Don’t want to burn the forest down and” He started to snicker again. “--get _fired.”_ He hardly got the word out before his voice devolved into another crescendo of laughter.

The pun was lame, but it did its job. Keith chuckled and responded, “How long have you been sitting on that one?”

“Too long. Tooooo long.”

Keith’s eyes returned to Burt destroying an unlucky copse of trees. Staying up late with Lance to keep an eye on Burt wasn’t so bad. This was the first time that Keith and Lance were indisputably looking in the same direction, at the same thing. That made this fire watching business seem all the more intimate and shared.

It was a humid night. Keith gathered the long hair smothering his neck and ears into the one hair band he owned. Though the open air helped cool him, but his mind wandered to hotter places that made his heart _thud._

Did the distant light of the forest fire change the shadows of his face, too? Keith tried to remember the details Lance shared about his appearance--steely eyes, dark skin, something something, chiseled Adonis--but couldn’t conjure a real image of him. He turned over the red Bayard in his hands, and for the first time since coming to Altea, he resented it. This stupid plastic device was the only tangible thing connecting him to another person, to Lance, but it wasn’t enough. Not really. But with a mountain separating Red Lion and Blue Lion Lookouts, it was all he had.

Except, perhaps the fire.

“Can the other lookouts see Burt too?” Keith asked. He wanted to know whether this was truly intimacy or if he was just reading too far into it.

Lance’s response was both carefree and inscrutable. “Pshh, I dunno.”

“Don’t you talk to them? You bug me constantly.”

“Yeah, but talking to you isn’t like talking to the others.” This admission came easy, like Lance hadn’t even realized himself that he felt that way. Or that he meant it. But now that it was out there, he stammered. “I mean, I check in on the other guys from time to time. I used to talk to Matt, my first summer. Talking to you is just different. It’s just--ah--I’m making all these ambiguous hand gestures right now because I can’t explain it.”

Keith found himself nodding along. “Yeah, I get frustrated with the radio too.” He wanted to add something more, something about how he used to love the distance of Altea but now found it maddening. Instead, he said, “It sucks.”

They settled into an easy silence. He had never really thought about it before, but the way fire moved mesmerized Keith. Its unpredictable rhythm, its flares and sparks. The heat clinging to his face. It made him feel calm. It made him feel alive. It was a pity he wasn’t allowed to make his own campfire, lest it grow into a monster like Burt.

It occurred to Keith that neither he nor Lance had investigated whether Burt was a naturally occurring forest fire. They just did their jobs and called it in. The source of the fire seemed like something they ought to have known.

“Hey Keith?” Lance asked.

His eyes didn’t move from the fire. “Yeah?”

“You, uh, you said some weird stuff a few weeks back. You called me in the middle of the night and started mumbling in your sleep, as if you were talking to someone else. I wanted to wake you up, but it seemed like a nice conversation and I didn’t want to ruin it.”

Keith’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. He could feel a memory of a dream, of a voice, flickering at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t grab hold of it. But he didn’t need to remember exact details to know who he had most likely been talking to.

“Keith? You there?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t mean to pause for so long, thinking. “I was dreaming about my mentor from the Garrison. Takashi Shirogane. He, uh, went missing in action a while ago.” How long was it now? Staring into the fire, Keith couldn’t recall. “The Garrison tried to put me through some mandatory bereavement counseling. Skipped it. They took away my wings to try and get me to show up. Never did. It’s hard to care about being a fighter pilot when you don’t have anyone to fight for.”

“Wait, was he your--”

“No,” Keith said quickly. There was a time when he would answered with something more ambiguous, when he was younger and more impressionable and deluded, but not now. Not here. “No, it was never like that.”

On the other side of the line, Lance seemed to be holding his breath. “Shit Keith, I didn’t mean to pry out tragic backstory.”

He cracked a smile before remembering that Lance was too far away to see it. “Nah, it’s fine. I wanted to tell you.”

Not wanting to dwell on Shiro, Keith moved along the conversation to lighter things. Like the teachers they both had and hated from pilot school, the little things they missed from the outside like instant coffee and margherita pizzas. Watching Burt eventually became boring, so Keith went back inside, lay on his bed, eyes closed, and kept the Bayard close by enough to answer without looking.

Between the easy banter, the stupid jokes that were only funny because they came out of Lance’s mouth, a lovely heat pooled to the bottom of his torso. The index finger of his free hand absently traced the metal of his belt buckle. The border of forbidden, unfamiliar territory. A border he hadn’t crossed yet to maintain some semblance of a professional relationship with his fellow fire lookout.

He’d pined and coveted fantasy relationships before. This time, he wasn’t going to be so stupid.

The person to actually cross that line, out of the blue, was Lance.

 _“I wish I was over there,”_ Lance said suddenly with a quiet, hungry longing. “Then we could actually hang out and uh.” He sighed, letting his train of thought go unsaid. “You know.”

Keith felt a stab in his heart and flushed. He did know, or at least he thought he did. If only there weren’t a mountain between them, then they could actually get closer. Close enough to see. To touch. To hear without the weird fogginess of a radio.

It might be possible to meet Lance in person, one day. But it would take a pretty big emergency to make that happen before the end of the summer, which Keith wasn’t too keen on anyway. He really didn’t want to meet Lance in a rescue situation. He kept imagining a coffee shop or a maybe a park as the setting of ther eventual meeting. If that read as something different that two coworkers hanging out after a long summer on the job, who was he to argue?

Swallowing thickly, Keith replied, “I wish that too.”

* * *

> **Day 33**
> 
> **Found some more letters from Shay. Where are all the responses from H? It just reads like she is writing and writing and getting nothing back. Did this H guy never write to her? Who is he? What gives? I gotta remember to ask Lance one of these days.**
> 
> **I’m getting restless. I knew that this job entailed a lot of sitting and looking at things. I dunno, I guess I didn’t realize how quickly it would get old. Lance helps me get through it. Tonight, I’m gonna mix things up and do my sitting and looking at this clifftop I found. Change of scenery should help.**

Altea National Reserve only made sense when it was viewed from up high. Mist rolling down the mountains in the morning. Treetops as far as the eye can see. Blue sky darkening slightly before glowing into a sunburst yellow sunset.

This was a view Keith could glimpse from his tower, but he enjoyed it more from natural vistas. A few hours before sunset, Keith gathered some food and set off down a new trail and hiked to the tallest point he could find. He had to scramble up a slight slope to get there, but he wasn't a rock climbing newbie, not anymore. As he unpacked his peanut butter sandwich, the sun started to dip behind the mountains.

Perhaps it was Keith, not Altea, that made sense at this altitude. He spent his whole life looking at the sky, at the stars, dreaming of the day he could fly among them. His Garrison education and training were a dream come true, in that respect. The pressure of being a prodigy took its toll, and the stress of the job was nothing to shake a stick at, but he still loved taking to the sky.

He might never fly again. Sitting on a clifftop, munching a peanut butter sandwich might be the next best thing.

“How ‘bout that sunset?” Lance hadn’t spoken to him in hours. This wasn’t entirely unusual; he was technically Keith’s boss, which meant he had more job responsibilities than simply looking at nature. That didn’t explain why he sounded especially chipper.

Keith answered with his mouth half-full. “Itch shalright.” That raw moment the night Burt appeared flitted in his thoughts, but he didn’t push it. The summer was not half gone. They had plenty of time to hash out what it meant.

“Good, good, good.” Now Lance’s voice grew more serious. “I, uh, don’t want to bring down the mood or anything, but I just got a call from the rangers. Remember Rolo and Nyma?”

He swallowed the last morsel of his sandwich. “What about ‘em?”

“They’ve been reported missing. They were supposed to meet up with family a dozen or so miles north, but never showed. Based on what they’re telling me, you’re probably the last person to see them alive.”

“Well I didn’t do it,” Keith blurted immediately. He paled at the implications of his own words. “I mean, I didn’t do anything. I’ll talk to police--” His stomach began to churn the moment Lance uttered the words ‘reported missing,’ and he regretted gobbling up that sandwich so fast.

“Relax! I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. We don’t know if anything bad has happened to them, just that they’re, well, gone.”

Keith wet his lips and swallowed. That was what the Garrison told him, too, though it didn’t take them long to change their story. “Do people go missing in Altea a lot?”

“Uh, more than ‘never’ but less than ‘all the time.’ Maybe the angry elk got them, ha.” Keith cringed away from the Bayard. Lance must’ve picked up that his joke fell flat, because he switched back to a more serious tone. “I just wanted to give you a heads up. I’ll be responding to their message in the morning. What should I tell them?”

Before Rolo and Nyma’s trail went cold, they wrote a scathing letter calling Keith a ‘psycho’ and accusing him of destroying their campsite. Any police officer worth his salt would investigate whether their accusations held any weight. But the important thing wasn’t what it looked like; it was the truth. And the truth was that Keith hardly laid eyes on either of them. He knew that. Lance knew that. And he trusted Lance. That was all that mattered.

Keith told Lance to tell the rangers whatever he wanted. If anything he knew would reunite Rolo or Nyma with their families, he was happy to help.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance opens up about his tragic backstory, and Keith discovers that he's not alone in the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Life doesn't abide by my update schedule :P
> 
> Also, I'm thinking of getting a beta reader! Do you love Voltron, Klance, Firewatch, and/or my writing? LMK

> **Day 45**
> 
> **Finally nailed a handstand AND a headstand yesterday. Lance says he doesn’t believe me. He’s just pissed that I did it first.**
> 
> **Things have been weird. I thought we had a bonding moment when Burt first showed up, but it’s like he forgot it even happened. Didn’t want to push it, but it’s been a while. ~~Shiro used to I wonder if I’m~~ I’ve been running that night through my head to see if I interpreted it wrong. I don’t think I did. He must be avoiding the subject on purpose.**
> 
> **Burt’s still going strong. Wonder when the firefighters will put it out.**

Keith put the pen down, not satisfied with what he had written, but happy enough to give it a rest. He hardly ever put pen to paper and walked away feeling like he had expressed anything worth reading, let alone worth sharing. It passed the time, and it helped him unload his most nagging thoughts. That’s gotta count for something.

The Bayard chimed. “What’s up? You looking at the fire again?” Lance asked.

Keith straightened in his chair and gazed out the window towards Blue Lion Lookout. “I’m looking at you.” He meant to just report what he was looking at, but it came out a little... _tender_.

Lance probably caught that mushy note in Keith’s voice. He just didn’t acknowledge it outright. A deflection tactic Keith had become very familiar with in the past two weeks. “Huh,” Lance responded. “I guess that means I’m looking right back atcha. Anyways, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

This was the announcement Keith was waiting for, the possibility of getting verbal confirmation that their bonding moment wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

Still looking at Blue Lion Lookout, Keith propped his elbows on the desk. “What is it?” He masked his voice to keep Lance from hearing his eagerness.

“Based on Sherlockian deduction, I’ve gathered that your backstory is the result of one, big, terrible thing. Mine’s not like that. It’s a bunch of little things that are insignificant and stupid on their own, but when you add ‘em up…”

Lance’s voice trailed off, and then he cleared his throat.

“Ok! Where to start?” Lance began. “It took me five tries to get my driver’s license because I kept failing the eye exam. But since I didn’t want glasses--can you see _me_ in glasses?--I just lied about it to my parents and drove around without a license. It was a foolproof plan until I got caught speeding with all my little siblings in the backseat.

“Every single time I’ve come close to winning a competition, no matter what it was for, I’ve choked. Every time. Even when I was a shoe-in to win. I don’t know why...

“I never heard the word ‘Arkansas’ spoken aloud until I was 17. I pronounced it ‘Ar-Kansas’ in my head. How did I figure out I was wrong? By saying Ar-Kansas in front of my whole class during an oral presentation about the Mexican-American War. Now whenever I think about that state, I remember that sinking feeling of being laughed at and not knowing why. And then having to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal.

“And when I didn’t get into the Garrison pilot program, I had a whole spiel prepared to tell my disappointed parents. ‘It wasn’t my fault. Some guy named Keith took my spot.’ But my folks weren’t actually disappointed. They never said it out loud, but I think they expected me to fail at the last minute. Because I’m careless, irresponsible, scatter-brained Lance, the guy who just sweats everything off with a joke. And that’s all I’m ever gonna be.”

Lance took a deep breath. There were more anecdotes to share, more stories to tell, but he was exerting enough self-control to skip straight to the point. “Look, I’m not trying to initiate a depressing dick-measuring contest. I just thought that since you shared some stuff about you, I should share some stuff about me.”

Keith remained silent for the entirety Lance’s story, silently mulling over their past interactions, whether or not he had rubbed salt in old wounds without meaning to. His preoccupation with their so-called bonding moment had blinded him to what Lance was actually worried about. Guilt and affection swelling in Keith’s chest, he swore to be better. A better friend, a better lookout.

While he didn’t he press Lance for any more details than he gave, Keith felt like he finally really knew him. They seemed like clashing opposites, but in truth they were both runaways hiding from their own pasts.

And sometimes escaping wasn’t always a bad thing.

* * *

 

> **Day 56**
> 
> **Fires are boring during the day. You can’t see any light or flames, just smoke. This controlled burn is lasting longer than I expected. A whole patch of forest is gone. Might hike over there and check it out.**
> 
> **I’ve decided to try swimming in the lake. I haven’t swum in anything grade school. I don’t even have any swimming gear, not that it matters. It’s not like anyone is around to see.**

Keith never liked swimming, but nearly 60 days into his tenure as a fire lookout, he felt like he had run out of new things to try in the park. All the trails he could feasibly get to were already explored, and the fire had long lost its novelty. Boredom made taking a dip in the lake seem like the greatest idea in the world.

Telling Lance about this, however, was a mistake. No one had ever given Keith so much unsolicited advice in his life. The way Lance told it, he was a swimming expert on par with the most decorated Olympic athletes. When he first started as a fire lookout, Keith would’ve responded to all this lecturing with snide potshots at Lance’s failure to become a fighter pilot, or a dig at his authority or intelligence. But this wasn’t the right way to brush off Lance, not without crossing a cruel line.

No, the best way to deal with Lance in this situation was to simply fuck with him. Stoop to his level of sarcasm and smart-assery and see how long it took for Lance to catch on.

“Pidge over at Green Lion said he saw an enormous grizzly coming your way,” Lance said as Keith finished rappelling down the shale drop. “It might gravitate towards the lake for water, so watch out.”

He was so familiar with this area, walking through the clearing to the lake was like flying on autopilot. “If I see a bear, I’ll just swim away,” Keith replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Swim away? _Swim away?_ Okay Mr. Pilot, which swim strokes can you do?”

Keith kept his voice monotone to avoid betraying his own joke. “The one where you kick your feet and move your arms. Doggy style?”

“Doggy _paddling_.” Keith covered his mouth to muffle a snicker. “Jesus Christ on burnt toast, this is a bad idea. You really should be wearing a life jacket. Or waterwings.”

“Too late to turn back now, I’m already here.”

The lake was a perfect portrait of stillness. No birds sang, no frogs croaked. The water glittered in silent stasis, as if it were waiting for Keith to disrupt that calm with his haphazard swim strokes.

Walking onto the lakebed, he half-expected to see the water-logged remains of Keever, the stereo he dumped in the water on his first day, on the beach or floating in the shallows. To his disappointment, there wasn’t any sign of it. Even the pit Rolo and Nyma dug to hold the stereo had been filled in and smoothed over, like it had never existed in the first place.

A large boulder in the sand seemed like the perfect place to leave his clothes. Keith had his hands on the hem of his shirt when he saw something on the rock and stopped short. The object was a clipboard.

He was reporting it to Lance before he even realized what he was doing. “Someone’s been here recently.” Keith said, approaching the rock. “They left their clipboard behind, and fat stack of paperwork.”

“Ugh, don’t talk to me about paperwork,” Lance groaned. “I’ve got so much of it now that Burt’s moved in. You regular fire lookouts don’t know how good you’ve got it.”

When Keith first glanced at the paperwork, he mistook it for a screenplay or script. Accustomed to claiming whatever he found in the forest as his own, he leaned against the rock and began to read. Who knows, maybe this amateur screenwriter would be sort of--

> **KK: Can the others see the fire too?**
> 
> **LM: I dunno.**
> 
> **KK: Don’t you talk to them? You bug me constantly.**
> 
> **LM: Yeah, but talking to you isn’t like talking to the others. I mean, I check in on Hunk and Pidge, the other guys, from time to time--**

“The fuck?” Keith’s hands began to shake. Those were his words, right here, copied almost exactly in slanted script. Even Lance’s most long-winded responses were transcribed in unflinching detail. Handwritten. Someone was eavesdropping on their conversations and taking notes in real-time.

He flipped to another random page.

> **LM: You looking at the fire again?**
> 
> **KK: I’m looking at you.**

Keith found his Bayard and hurriedly pressed the transmit button. His words came out in a rushed jumble. “Someone’s been listening to us. Someone’s been listening to our conversations and writing them out.”

Lance sounded surprised, but skeptical. “Uh, you sure? Eating strange, woodland mushrooms is all fun and games until--”

“Talking to you isn’t like talking to the others,” Keith read aloud in a stilted voice. He flipped a couple pages forward. “I wish I was over there. Then we could actually hang out and _you know._ ”

_“What?”_

His eyes tried to devour all the information on the pages as possible, but in his panic his mind could only swallow short morsels at a time. The copied transcripts went back _weeks._ At the end of the stack of transcripts was a chart printed in black ink and filled out in a different hand.

**BALMERA STATION STAFF MEMO**

 

> **SUBJECT: 7360**
> 
> **FREQUENCY: 4376.Mhz**
> 
> **SOCIAL ROLE: MO**
> 
> **NOTE: Frequent departure from Red Lion area to lake, canyons, caves. Restless, likely to migrate next season**

 

> **SUBJECT: 5365**
> 
> **FREQUENCY: 4379.Mhz**
> 
> **SOCIAL ROLE: O**
> 
> **NOTE: Distracted behaviors. Unreciprocated desire for copulation with other male. Consult previous data?**

“They’ve been tracking us,” Keith realized aloud. To Lance, he said, “We’re being tracked, like _rats._ There’s this entire worksheet of stats, with subject numbers and, and, and _social roles._ Whatever the fuck that means. _”_

“Wait, how do you know this has anything to do with us?”

If Lance weren’t a disembodied voice on a radio, Keith would shake him. With the transcripts, there was little doubt in his mind what these papers were talking about. “One of them mentions leaving Red Lion often, and it names a bunch of places I like to go. That’s me. And the other…” Keith blanched. _Unreciprocated desire? What?_ “It’s, uh, got something about distracted behaviors. That seems like you.”

“Wow,” Lance said with an edge of bitterness. “Good to know that you could identify me based on my distracted behaviors. I just used air quotes, by the way.”

Keith spoke without thinking. “Can’t you stay focused for a second?” He immediately cringed. “I mean, there’s more to it than that. There’s a note about consulting other data. How long have they been watching us?”

“I’m not entirely convinced anyone is, Keith. I mean, wouldn’t we have noticed some shady character skulking around from up in our towers? It’s sort of what we _do._ ”

Keith wasn’t sure where to begin with his explanation that no, they wouldn’t have seen a thing. He hadn’t glimpsed a single human soul, face-to-face, since before he arrived at Altea. Rolo and Nyma were shadows on a horizon. Lance was a voice in a radio. There was no one else, no one. But there must be _someone,_ someone watching his movements and taking notes by hand. Hacking their radio frequency was one thing. Following Keith without being seen or heard was another. Something was going on, and whoever was behind it had taken great lengths to keep either of them from knowing.

Talking to Lance was no use, so Keith returned to the clipboard. The memo header suggested it had come from somewhere called Balmera Station. The name seemed familiar. Maybe it was a place he passed on the way to Altea when he arrived for this job.

“What’s Balmera Station?” he asked Lance. His pits were sweating, his heart was pounding, his breath growing shallow and urgent. “Is that nearby the park?”

“Uh, no? Balmera _Valley_ is an area in the park.” Lance paused. “Actually, that’s around where you found that fence a few weeks back.”

Keith put down the radio and whipped out his map. Balmera Valley was just north of the lake. He had seen that path, but had never before had a reason to explore it. Folding up his map, Keith stuffed it in his pocket. “I’m going there,” he said before stowing the radio too. Balmera Station being close to that mysterious fence was no accident. He was going to get to the bottom of this.

Storming off, Keith felt a little hurt that Lance didn’t grasp the gravity of what he had found. Maybe he was being deliberately obtuse to get back at Keith calling him distracted, something he guessed Lance was self-conscious about. Or he just had a hard time believing such a crazy story over the radio alone.

The questions of Lance’s behavior and the mysterious clipboard bounced around in Keith’s head as he carefully walked across a tree trunk lying across the canyon like a bridge. But like his trip to the lake, his journey was stopped short by the sudden appearance of something strange.

A small black radio lay on the ground in the middle of the path.

In a moment of shock, Keith forgot where he had put his Bayard and frantically rifled through his own pockets. The sight of an abandoned radio, damning evidence of another human being who may or may not be spying on fire lookouts, short-circuited something inside him. He breathed an honest sigh of relief when he found it.

“There’s a radio over here,” Keith reported. Cautious, he bent and picked it up. It was a black Bayard, nearly identical to his own.

“Hmm, bizarre.” He could tell by the mocking undertones of Lance’s voice that he wasn’t quite convinced. Knowing him, he probably thought that Keith was playing an elaborate joke on him and was patiently waiting for the punchline.

This Bayard looked older, more beat up than his red one. Keith brought the black Bayard to his lips. “Hello? Is there any--”

A sharp, heavy impact on the back of Keith’s head sent him to his knees. Dropping both radios, pain searing through his skull, he tried to look over his shoulder. A second impact struck his temple, and his world went black.

Consciousness returned to him in a swirl of sensation. Dirt pressed against his cheek. Blood thudding in his ears. Lance’s voice calling his name. His own eyesight fading in and out of utter darkness. He couldn’t tell if a few seconds had passed or an hour. The only thing he knew with certainty was that he was afraid.

“Keith? Keith? Earth to Keith? Helllllllo?”

Everything blinked back into focus in an instant, and Keith snapped back up. Breathing hard, he scrambled on the ground to scan the park in every direction and look over his shoulder. No sign of anybody, or the strange radio and clipboard, for that matter. No footprints either. It was like all physical proof of the last ten minutes had vanished.

Keith’s red Bayard was on the ground beside his backpack. He remembered holding and dropping his radio, but not his backpack. Ignoring the residual pain of his headache, Keith examined his bag and rummaged through its contents. Everything he had brought with him--rope, a flashlight, an extra shirt to wear after his swim--was there. Nothing new was left behind. It was like his attacker had taken it off him and just laid it to the side, undisturbed. Why would they do such a thing?

This was his own damn fault. Keith had picked up a strange radio without looking around to see if anyone was watching him. Of course the owner of the radio and the clipboard hadn’t gone. Of course that person attacked him to take them back.

“Come onnnn, Keith. Don’t leave me hanging, bro.”

The anger and panic bubbling inside him erupted the moment he grabbed hold of his radio. “I just got fucking attacked. Don’t even think I’m confused or making this up. I was just hit over the head, _twice_ \--”

“Huh? Attacked? Where? Who?”

“--and the clipboard and radio are both gone. Someone knocked me out cold and took them right out of my hands! Somebody could’ve just killed me out here, Lance.” Keith’s voice broke when he spoke Lance’s name.

“Holy shit,” Lance said. The severity of what was happening seemed to finally dawn on him. “You’re not kidding. Who the hell would do that? Do you need help? I can bring you to a clinic.”

“No!” he answered without thinking. “I mean, don’t suit up. I’m fine. As for who did this…” Keith set his jaw. “I’ll let you know when I track down the bastard.” Without another word, he took off in the direction of Balmera Station.

Walking north, Keith came upon a different side of the fenced enclosure than the one he marked on his map. He had guessed that the scale of the fence was larger than he thought, but finding it so fast surprised him. Altea’s natural expanse had messed with his sense of distance and scale again. Unlike the first stretch of fence he discovered, this portion included a padlocked door. An entrance.

Questions that bugged him when he first discovered the fence--how big was it, what was inside, who had put it there--nagged at him with new urgency. His attacked surely had something to do with this. He had to get inside.

Keith spoke into the radio. “Here. I’m finding a way in.”

“Uh buddy, remember the last time you tangoed with this fence?

“I’m not climbing over it. There’s a door, I’m going to try to pick the lock with my knife. Or smash it. Probably that.”

The padlock on the door required either a combination or a key to open. Just to make sure, Keith input 1-2-3-4. It didn’t open. Whoever was based inside Balmera Valley obviously had a better head for security than Lance. He had never picked a lock with his knife before, so he didn’t know why he suddenly expected to do so now. The blade was too wide to fit inside the keyhole, and Keith worried that trying to saw through the bolt would blunt its edge.

Brute force was his last option. Finding a solid rock the size of a baseball, Keith slammed it against the lock. The resulting _clang!_ shattered the silence. Keith grit his teeth and did it again, and then again. He examined the lock and swore when he found it undented, unmoved. The fence had beaten him-- _again._

This wasn’t exactly the most secure lock in the world. The problem was that Keith lacked the tools to cut or pry it off. Panting, Keith said as much to Lance. He asked whether there was a crowbar sitting in a supply cache somewhere, or maybe if another lookout had one.

“You know what? The firefighters are cool guys,” Lance replied. “They could probably get that door down in no time if you asked for their help. I think they’re coming back in a few days.” Keith didn’t want to wait a few days to get past this goddamned fence, but it seemed like he had no other choice.

He started home to Red Lion Lookout.

The red roof of his tower was in view when Lance spoke to him once more.

“Keith. I just realized something really bad. Like, really really bad.” Keith took the radio out of his pocket to listen as he walked. “I never reported the stuff with Rolo and Nyma. I told the rangers you didn’t see anything. But if someone’s been recording the stuff we say…”

“Then they have proof you lied,” Keith finished, halting in his tracks. “Lance, why would you _do that?”_

“I figured that they would turn up in a couple of days like campers always do. I didn’t want to make you talk to police for no reason. Besides, we didn’t really have any information to begin with.”

“ _You don’t know that._ People vanishing into thin air is serious. They’ve got families looking for them, and we could’ve given them a lead.”

“ _I thought I was helping you!_ ”

“ _You thought--_ ”

A twig snapped. Keith whipped out his knife without hesitation or thought, flashing the blade in the direction of the sound. A squirrel dashed through dry leaves, and leaves sighed with the wind. There was no one there. It was just the ambient noise of the forest and its wildlife, living and breathing around him. What would Keith have done if he saw a figure standing in the shadows? Shanked them?

The lack of danger was a cold comfort. Keith couldn’t stand to be stuck down on the forest floor, exposed at all sides. He put his knife away and ran towards his lookout. He scaled the stairs and retreated within his tower. It wasn’t exactly a fortress, but up here Keith could at least see what was coming from all sides. At least up here he had the high ground.

Keith had flopped on the bed, exhausted, when the Bayard chimed.

“Here’s the plan,” Lance said. “Tomorrow I’m gonna ask the rangers for a list of all the campers who’ve come into the park since you started as a lookout. That should help us narrow down who might be following you. What I need you to do is sit tight and don’t panic.”

“Really?” Keith asked with a tired, but firm frown. “Are you actually gonna call the rangers this time, or are you just gonna say you did?”

Lance didn’t answer him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he and Lance argue about whether there is a conspiracy afoot, Keith explores the mysterious Black Lion Lookout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, about my update schedule.
> 
> Between work getting intense and my getting sick, writing has been slow. And because I also plan on participating in NaNoWriMo in November to crank out my novel, I can't promise regular updates until December. I'll try to update at least once more before November to tide you all over. Thanks for bearing with me through all this! Your comments are all lovely and it makes me so glad when others enjoy my writing.

> **Day 57**
> 
> **I haven’t slept in 36 hours. Writing is pointless, but I don’t know what else to do.**  
> 
> **Someone has been following me since day one. They attacked me yesterday. I dunno why. There must be a reason. You don’t stalk someone and copy their conversations for no reason. A lot of weird things have happened this summer, but this...**
> 
> **The door to my lookout doesn’t have a lock. No security. I felt safe here--how???**

The Garrison taught Keith a thing or two outside the cockpit. For example, logic and reasoning. Keith was the first to admit that he wasn’t the best at well reasoned decision-making, but only because he usually didn’t have the time or patience to sit around deliberating. Now, stuck in Red Lion Lookout and too freaked out to venture outside, Keith dusted off that old knowledge to approach his problem analytically.

According to a principle called Occam’s Razor, the least complicated hypothesis was the most correct. The simplest explanation to yesterday’s weirdness was probably the right one. If he kept that in mind, figuring out what was happening to him should be easy peasy.

_Should be._

Staying up all night wasn’t that conducive to logical thinking. It was only after cracking open another tin of beans and ripping into an apple for breakfast that he realized just how incoherent his explanations sounded in the daylight. Definitely not solid enough to report to Lance, unless he wanted to be ridiculed.

The apple was one of those red delicious kinds that tasted like juicy styrofoam. Keith nearly choked on it when the Bayard chimed and Lance started to yell into the radio.

“--hole to do his job. Listen, this is my serious voice. Yeah, I have one of those. I’ve already got a fire that’s nearly a month old and a team of firefighters I can’t get in touch with. I sleep in my pilot uniform now with my helmet by my bed. The last thing I need is a renegade fire lookout.”

Keith was a second away from yelling back when he realized that Lance wasn’t actually talking to him. He had accidentally turned on their channel again, and Lance’s hot mic was broadcasting his side of the conversation to the red Bayard.

“He can’t just leave, Hunk. He’s got nowhere to go,” Lance continued. “I mean, yeah this is a big park. And yeah, it’s hard to track people down but he can’t go far. Pidge, of all people--” The radio suddenly cut out.

He remained still for a while, nervous that the sound of movement and breathing might drown out any new transmission. Certain that Lance wouldn’t return, Keith picked up the Bayard from his charger and turned it over in his hands.

_He can’t just leave, he’s got nowhere to go…_ Was Lance worried that Keith would try to leave Altea after yesterday’s attack? He was frightened, but he wasn’t a coward. It would take more than a sneak attack and a sucker punch to send Keith packing. Plus abandoning Lance without a word was...not something Keith would ever do. To anyone. But especially him. Lance knew that, didn’t he?

Then Keith remembered that Lance was the same dumbass who failed to report his encounter with Rolo and Nyma to the rangers. He fully believed that Lance was on his side. He just didn’t know if he could trust his judgement.

The Bayard chimed again.

“Keith, you there? Ok, here’s the deal,” Lance said. “I can’t contact with anyone outside the park. Everyone has to check out the telephone wires in their areas, just in case a tree fell on them or something.”

Keith had stayed up all night. It didn’t storm, there was no wind. “I didn’t think the weather was that bad last night.”

“Me neither, but you never know with nature.” Lance sighed. “I tried to ask the other lookouts or rangers about your stalker, but with communications down I couldn’t really get any answers. Freaky coincidence, huh?” 

“Doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence to me,” he said, his voice hardening. If Keith hadn’t eavesdropped on his other conversation, he would’ve suspected that Lance was trying to procrastinate on calling the rangers again. This was legit.

Keith stood up to run out the door, but then stopped to measure his words. The last time he confronted Lance about something he heard on the radio, they fought. That was back in the beginning of summer, before Lance became Keith’s sole emotional lifeline and friend. Now there was more at stake.

“You know I’m not just going to abandon my lookout, right?” Keith blurted. “Even with all this weird stuff going on, there’s no way I’m leaving the park until the summer’s over.”

“Duh,” was Lance’s instant response. Keith thought he heard a little relief in the word. “That’s what we hired you for, isn’t it? Anyways, enough dawdling. Let’s go!”

A part of Keith didn’t really want to leave Red Lion Lookout. Even though the lookout wasn’t the most secure home base on the planet, it at least gave him the highground. A bird’s eye view of the forest. Once he left, he’d be on the same level as whoever was stalking him. Exposed. But Lance had asked him to go. He was counting on him. There was no other choice.

Under Lance’s direction, Keith headed northeast to follow the comm lines to the edge of his sector. It was a chilly morning, and mist still hung in the air as low as Keith’s knees. Communication cables hung between telephone poles that dotted the damp mountainside, leading eventually towards Blue Lion Lookout. Keith had seen them plenty of times on his walks, but never had a reason to look at them closely. So far, the cables appeared intact.

At first, Keith resisted looking over his shoulder and endured the constant, prickling feeling that he was being followed. Nature found ways to startle him anyway. He cried out at the sound of a woodpecker burrowing into a tree trunk, halting his progress to investigate a strange sound in the bushes. The rustling of leaves began to sound like footsteps that marched in time with his own, but the noise conveniently vanished whenever Keith tried to find its source.

Lance was annoyed by all the disruptions. “The squirrels aren’t out to get you,” he said. Keith responded that his thoroughness was necessary. He’d been complacent in these woods for so long. No one was taking him by surprise ever again. It wasn’t like Lance understood, safe in his cozy tower.

The last telephone poll was perched on a tall ridge nearby the cable cars that, in the direst of emergencies, would carry Keith between two mountain peaks to Blue Lion Lookout. As he started his ascent, Lance called Keith on the radio.

“Ask me a question,” Lance asked.

The request came from left field. Keith narrowed his eyes as he responded, “Why?”

“Because you’re really keyed up, which makes _me_ really keyed up, which makes you _even more_ keyed up. A change of subject might calm us both down.”

He thought of Lance sleeping in his pilot uniform, paranoid that he might get a call in the middle of the night, and sighed “Fine. New subject: how did you become the park helicopter guy?”

“Bor-ring, but ok. Most cargo contracts end in late spring, so I kept going broke every summer. I charmed my way into the office of a former Garrison instructor, and he suggested that I consider becoming a fire lookout when I didn’t have any work. They needed an emergency liaison who knew their way around a helicopter cockpit, so here I am.”

“Someone from the Garrison said I should take this job too...” After he had gotten into a fight with an airman who tried to convince him to return, his superior officer suggested Altea to Keith as a place he could ‘clear his head’ and ‘get away from the demons.’ Right before kicking him out of the Garrison until his attitude saw some major adjustment. As if Shiro’s disappearance was just a big mood swing he could get over.

Occam’s Razor slashed through his mind. Keith had finally found a common link to tie his theories together.

“Keith,” Lance warned, sensing the direction of Keith’s thoughts. “Don’t--”

“I always thought it was a strange coincidence that we both had Garrison backgrounds,” Keith continued, his new theory gaining momentum and righteousness with every word. “You think we were recruited on purpose? Like the Garrison is intentionally staffing undesirables here, to study their behavior? I’m definitely being followed. Do you think everyone else is too?”

“No, I don’t think that.”

At this point Keith was on the brink of shouting. “You sound worried, Lance. Why is that? Because you think I’m onto something and you’re afraid to admit it?”

Lance took a deep breath before letting fly a belligerent rebuttal in a single breath. “ _Fuck me sideways with a sandblaster!_ First of all, any theory that lumps me in with ‘undesirables’ is automatically suspect, nay, _bullshit._ Second of all, the only thing I’m worried about is how quickly you turned a normal conversation into a military conspiracy. I’m with you when you say you were attacked, but sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.”

“Are the other fire lookouts ex-Garrison?”

This time, Lance didn’t answer right away. The question had truly thrown him. “I know Hunk is. I’m maybe 80% certain about Pidge. But they’re not like you and me. They’re here because they like nature. Hunk is a rock guy, Pidge is into trees, no one made them come. No one targeted them. Things just worked out that way!”

During this discussion, Keith continued scaling the ridge and made it to the lone telephone pole installed at the peak. The wire dipped like a lazy smile between each pole, extending far into the distance. The vista was much higher than his tower; the tree canopy looked almost like soft green carpet, or lush grass that he could fall asleep in. He shielded his eyes from the sun so he could follow the wires with his gaze against the clear blue sky.

And found nothing. The cable was undamaged.

Keith felt that after all of this walking and stress, Lance could’ve been more happy to hear the news. “Cables are fine, yet I still can’t reach HQ. Why?”

The answer was so simple Keith felt ashamed that he didn’t think of it earlier.

“Maybe it’s not the wires, but the signal that’s jammed,” Keith suggested, putting a hand on his hip. “The Garrison has equipment that can disrupt long range radio waves. I never used it myself but--.” Lance swore, and Keith imagined him rolling his eyes. “I’m just saying that after yesterday this doesn’t seem like a big coincidence. Someone is trying to cut us off on purpose.”

The wind whistled throughout the canyons, and the forest sighed. Not a single sound came through the Bayard. Keith looked out over the park’s expanse. Who was doing this to them? And where were they hiding now?

“I hope you’re wrong Keith,” Lance finally said. “I really hope you’re wrong.”

Walking down the ridge was far less tiring than climbing up. The wind kept him cool under the late summer sun. Keith didn’t gawk at the view like he used to. Altea was a beautiful place, and he had grown accustomed to the vistas and landscapes. The only completely new things caught his eyes these days--new things like a black cabin partially obscured by leafless trees.

It took Keith a moment to recognize the structure’s strange square roof and large windows. Black Lion Lookout, the first lookout ever built at Altea.

According to Lance, Black Lion became obsolete once the rangers built newer, better towers across the park. Now that Keith saw it up close, he could see why.

From his vantage point, Black Lion looked like a regular cabin perched on a tall hill. Derelict picnic tables sat in a row beside the cabin, and the skeleton of an outhouse through a thin cluster of trees. It didn’t look like a great spot to build a lookout. Maybe that was why it fell into disarray.

The last people to use the defunct lookout for anything was, to Keith’s knowledge, Matt Holt and his father. The scientists. “The Holts were Garrison, weren’t they?” Keith said into the Bayard.

Lance grumbled before answered. “Yeah, but not on the military side.”

Once again, the facts were lining up perfectly into place. “I found the old lookout,” Keith said into the radio. “I’m going to check it out.”

“Why? Looking for the ghosts of national park past?”

“Because I’m bored and it seems cool.” Keith stowed the radio in his pocket. The truth was that he didn’t want to be cooped up in his tower after last night. He wanted to figure out what was going on in this park, and Black Lion Lookout offered a tantalizing thread of investigation he couldn’t ignore.

Up close, the cabin seemed larger. Haunting. The large windows were boarded shut with plywood that looked dark and moist. Keith turned the knob of the front door and was surprised when it twisted easily. As he lightly moved to open the door, the entire thing fell off its hinges and into the cabin.

Whistling wind and the smell of wet rot overtook his senses, and a thousand treetops sprang into his vision. The entire back half of the lookout had long collapsed, leaving a gaping wound that would send any clumsy hiker tumbling down the mountainside. In its prime, the lookout probably did have a great view of a huge swath of forest.

Keith took out his flashlight to get a better look. What was left of the lookout floor was covered in old leaves, paper, and garbage blown in from the wind. A ruined Alfor Fire Find lay in pieces in the center. A small, ancient looking bookshelf stood snug against one wall, holding nothing but a mildewy box of cigarettes.

His flashlight slowly traversed the floor and fell on a set of stairs spiraling beneath the cabin. A basement. Keith didn’t hesitate to go inside.

What he found looked similar to his own tower--a bed, a small iron furnace, a sink. A huge window with no glass facing the mountain beyond. This was where the Holts actually lived.

A charred guitar was propped against the wall. Keith picked it up and strummed it. Hopelessly out of tune. Turning it over in his hands, he found an engraving on the neck. _S. Holt._ It belonged to Matt’s dad. He put it back, guilty to have disturbed the Holts’ belongings.

A pile of brown, ashy sheets lay crumpled on the beds, and burned scraps of paper lay around a desk. In fact, almost everything in the room looked burnt to a crisp. Even the walls were covered in black streaks of soot.

Keith knelt and touched the ground to feel the dust with his fingertips. He looked up and spied a pile of old cigarette butts scattered by the cots. In the Garrison, Keith was taught how to start a fire with cigarette butts. It was one of those obscure survival skills pilots had to learn in case they got marooned somewhere. Maybe one of the Holts liked to smoke in bed. Or maybe someone, perhaps the Holts themselves, burned this place on purpose.

The only person who could help him find out was Lance, so he took out his radio. “What were the Holts like?” Keith asked. “Do you remember?”

“‘Course I do. Matt was a few years older than us. He was one of those people who had a million random, but really cool facts up his sleeve, and whenever you were on the subject he’d whip ‘em out. I’ve never met anyone as smart as that guy. He was the guy who told me about those trees that are all connected underground. They look like a bunch of skinny trees, but they’re actually a single organism. Wish I could remember what they were called.”

While listening, Keith found himself grinding his teeth. He had no idea Matt and Lance were actual buddies. It made the friendship he had forged with Lance feel cheap, less significant. It was an irrational feeling, but it was strong all the same.

“What about his dad?” Keith asked.

“I didn’t really talk to Mr. Holt that much. Manning the radio was sort of Matt’s thing.”

“Did either of them smoke? There are some old cigarettes here.”

“I dunno. I only saw them like twice.”

“You _saw_ them? In person? _Twice?_ ”

“Uh, yeah? What’s it to you.”

Keith looked out the broken window and found Blue Lion Lookout’s silhouette. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

A sound of fingernails scratching on metal forced Keith to tear his eyes away from the window. He whirled around, and his eyes immediately fell on the small iron furnace installed in the corner.

“Lance, there’s something in here,” Keith whispered into the radio.

“Are you sure?” Lance replied, sounding a little concerned.

“I dunno. Call you back.”

Keith slowly approached the furnace and dropped to one knee. The fire that burnt this place to a crisp could’ve originated from here. The scratching sound happened again. Swallowing, Keith slowly extended his arm and flipped open the furnace door.

A racoon burst out of the darkness and launched at Keith’s face. He screamed in alarm and crossed his forearms in front of his face to keep its claws from scratching him. The animal clamored away and dashed out the open window, screeching with every step.

Keith lay on the ground, covered in dirt, panting. He numbly took out his Bayard, but sat with the finger on the button for a few more moments, unable to speak over his own thudding heartbeat.

“I think I just got rabies,” he said breathlessly.

“What?” Lance asked. Keith explained what happened with the racoon, and Lance gasped with disgust. “Ewwww, it touched you with its creepy little rodent hands!”

“I know, I was there!” Keith replied. “Should I be going to a doctor?”

“It didn’t break skin, so you don’t need medical attention. What you do need to do is take five hundred showers because that shit is disgusting.”

Keith agreed that it was time to get out of there. A shower didn’t sound so bad.

On his way up the stairs, Keith stepped on something that clinked. He lifted his boot--a set of keys. Huh. It seemed like a pretty good souvenir, so he put it in his backpack. There was no harm in taking this one small thing. After all, the door to Black Lion Lookout didn’t need to be locked anymore.

They didn’t speak for most of the walk back. The encounter with the raccoon had depleted Keith’s energy. It was hard to practice constant vigilance and entertain Lance’s banter at the same time.

“Keith.” Lance said just as Red Lion Lookout’s red roof came into view. “Look around. You see anyone?”

Alarmed, Keith whirled around and searched the woods for movement. Nothing. “No,” he said.

“You hear anyone?”

“No.”

“You--you smell anyone?”

“Lance.”

“Hear me out for a second. What if we’re blowing this out of proportion? What if you’re not being followed? I’m not saying some weirdo wasn’t watching you before, but running into them at the lake could have chased them away. Is that possible?”

Keith’s shoulders relaxed. The possibility that maybe the danger had passed, that he didn’t need to worry after all, was enticing. “Could be.”

Despite his ambivalent response, Keith had already decided that Lance was right. Yes he was attacked, yes he had stumbled onto a clipboard of freaky papers. But that didn’t mean he still had to look over his shoulder. Altea was huge. His attacker could escape almost in any direction, confident that they wouldn’t be found. Why would they stick around when Keith was onto their game?

Getting attacked by a raccoon was scarier than getting knocked unconscious, but only because Keith was now up to his ears in adrenaline and paranoia. He couldn’t keep looking over his shoulder like this.

“Actually, yeah,” Keith finally said. “They’re probably--”

_“Cough, cough, ack!”_

The blood drained from Keith’s face. The hand holding the Bayard to his mouth became slick with sweat, and his heartbeat jumped.

“Lance,” Keith said with a faint whisper. “Did you--did you just cough?”

A beat of silence. “No,” Lance finally said, equally disturbed. “Was it you?”

The hairs on Keith’s arms and neck straightened. “No.”

He stared at his Bayard in horror. The object that had unwittingly become his most prized possession had now turned traitor. Keith looked to his left, then his right. It was only midday, yet the shadows of the trees darkened and creeped towards him. The woods weren’t safe. The radio wasn’t safe. Nowhere was safe.

The urgency in Lance’s voice was the most terrifying thing of all. “Go to your tower,” he said. “Don’t come out, and don’t call me. I’ll contact you.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Lance find a new way to communicate, and they set off to investigate Balmera Station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I won NaNo, got a bit burned out, found a new OTP, and was generally distracted. I hope this update is worth the wait!
> 
> This chapter is longer than the others, but it's also a bit less refined. I'll probably be back to do some line edits. The chapter total for the entire fic will be 10, so we're in the final stretch. 
> 
> I love reading your comments, and I really appreciate the support :) Thanks for reading!

> **Day 60**
> 
> **Occurred to me today that the food at the supply depot may not be safe to eat. I’ve got a decent amount of rations left. Might last till the end of the summer.**
> 
> **Still haven’t heard from Lance. Getting worried.**

Writing would never be Keith’s forte. He couldn’t visualize all the strands of information he collected and make connections with just words. So he mapped it out instead.

Keith used duct tape to attach the corners of his personal map of the park to the large window above his desk. With his pen, he marked all of the landmarks he’d found, including the cave, the fence, Rolo and Nyma’s old camp, and Black Lion Lookout. On scraps of paper ripped from his own journal, Keith then wrote down names and phrases that he felt relevant to this mystery and placed them on the map.

Every note he had found from Shay was also taped to the window, with his own commentary attached. He specifically underlined Shay’s mention of Balmera Valley and scribbled, _What happened there? Did she run into people from the Garrison? Who is H?_ He taped up the angry letter Rolo and Nyma left behind at their ruined camp. _What happened to them? Who attacked their camp, and where are they now?_

While rifling through his backpack for any other clues or scraps he found in the woods, Keith retrieved the small key he found at Black Lion Lookout. He almost taped the key up too, but thought better of it. It was such a small thing, and he couldn’t think of its significance to the larger conspiracy going on at Altea. After all, Black Lion was a ruin. Who would want a key to it?

 

With the precious amount of twine Keith had scraped together in supply caches, he created a web of connections between the people he’d seen, the places he’d been.

His running theory was that the Holts were somehow involved with Balmera Station three summers ago. Maybe they left so suddenly because the Garrison told them not to interfere with any test subjects, burning their own campsite before leaving to erase all traces of their presence. Shay must have stumbled on it, but obviously the Garrison had let her go. Maybe Rolo and Nyma got too close as well, and were chased away. Or abducted.

But none of that explained what the Garrison was up to, or why it was tracking Keith’s movements. What was the point of all this?

“Good morning Red Lion Lookout! You ready for another b-e-a-yootiful day in Altea?”

Keith scrambled for his radio. “Lance! I’ve been waiting to hear from you for days. What gives?”

Lance did not seem to hear him. “Gee, do you have that poster on the wall of Altea’s beautiful tree species? You should, it’s standard issue. It’s a really nice poster. Take a look at it.”

Scowling, Keith scanned the walls of his lookout. Nailed to the corner of one of his south-facing windows was a poster containing printed tree sketches. But trees were the last thing on his mind.

“Yeah, but I don’t feel like playing around with some _poster_. I want to know who the fuck--”

“If you want to talk freely, then maybe you should read between the lines. And look. At the. Poster.” As an afterthought, Lance added, “ _Please_.”

Keith looked back at the poster, then it dawned on him. Of course! Lance was trying to give Keith a message without saying it outright, just in case someone was still tapping their radios. Now Keith stood so close to the poster that his nose almost touched the paper. He studied it intensely, searching for some hidden code.

“There’s a tree on there that matches the name of a special place on your map,” Lance instructed.

He whirled around to look at his map, now attached to the wall. Looking between the two documents, he finally spotted a similarity--Cottonwood. The tree poster contained a sketch of the cottonwood tree, and the map had a reference to Cottonwood Creek.

The only reason Keith had never been to Cottonwood Creek was because the foliage between there and his lookout was thick with thorns and poison ivy. Then Burt stampeded through and engulfed the entire area in flames. The controlled burn was almost finished, and that area of Altea was just ash now. It was all clear, a straight shot to his destination.

“I see it. Never been there before.” Keith hoped he sounded both casual and cryptic.

“Really? That’s a lovely part of the park at this time of year. You should check it out.”

“Yeah, sure,” Keith said. “I’ll head there...sometime.” He didn’t want eavesdroppers to catch on to when he was leaving his lookout. Hopefully, Lance would pick up on that.

“Riiiight. Well, let me know if you spot any fires? Lance, out.”

Keith didn’t wait to put on his backpack and head out. If this was his only way to really reopen communications with Lance, he had to act now.

Just as he suspected, the layer of trees and thorny bushes that kept Keith out of the southern tip of his patch of Altea was gone. The ground was nothing but a large, scorched stain now. The ash felt gritty beneath his boots, crunching with every step. Part of Keith felt sorry that the park was now mired by black streaks of soot. But a fire was a small price to pay for the overall health of the park, and the safety of the humans inside it.

Cottonwood Creek wasn’t really a creek. It was far too dry for that. Without water, the creek was just a path made of soft soil and sediment. Keith wasn’t sure exactly how far he was supposed to go, so he decided to wander. Maybe he’d find what Lance wanted him to find. Maybe Lance was there, waiting for him.

With that thought in mind, Keith broke into a run.

The creek trail led to a small pond. Er, pit. The pond was completely dry thanks to the drought. Among the brown weeds and litter, Keith saw what looked like an old red snowmobile in the middle. The park rangers must use those to get around the park during the winter. Maybe this one had been parked on the frozen pond, only to break the ice and be lost forever.

He walked into the middle of the pond to check it out. After all, this might be where Lance was leading him. Brushing brittle cattails and weeds to the side, he quickly found that someone else had found the snowmobile a long time ago. It’s hood had been opened and its interior ripped apart. Keith didn’t even know how to make sense of what was missing, what was broken. There was no way _this_ would help him.

Keith was climbing out of the pond when he spotted it--a muted yellow supply cache, installed beside a tree. _Bingo._ He rushed over to the box and input the usual code, 1-2-3-4, and gasped when it failed to open.

He slowly retrieved his radio. “I made it,” Keith said. “You’re right. This area really is...something. There’s a supply cache here, but the usual combination doesn’t work.”

Lance wasted no time responding. “The combo is 5-6-7-8. Heh, I didn’t have the time to think of something better.”

Keith input the combination into the lock and flipped open the cache lid.

Sitting right in the middle of the metal box was dark green Bayard. A fresh radio. Swallowing, Keith dropped his red Bayard--his lifeline--into the box and grabbed the new one.

The new green Bayard was a bit heavier. It felt unfamiliar and clunky in his hand. Looked like a shitter model, too. “Hello?” Keith whispered into it. He didn’t know why he kept his voice down. “Lance?”

“The one and only.”

Keith’s entire body relaxed, a tightly wound spring loosening its spiral little by little. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice. I missed it.”

“I missed _you_ ,” Lance admitted with a fervor that made Keith flush. “I felt like I couldn’t radio you at all, about anything, no matter how much I wanted to. And then I was scared the creep would figure out I was trying to get you a new radio. I hiked all the way to HQ and back without telling a soul, and then I hiked to that cache in the middle of the night, pissing myself the whole way there. It’s been a trip and a half.”

If Lance hiked from his lookout to the cache, that meant he went right passed Red Lion Lookout. They had been so close to each other, and Keith had no idea. He understood why Lance didn’t try to see him face to face. He just wished it had happened anyway.

“This radio clashes with my everything,” Keith said, frowning at the radio’s muted green casing.

“It was the only extra one I could find. You can’t color coordinate in an emergency. At least the axe is red.”

Keith peered back into the cache. A fireman’s axe with a wood handle, a chunky red blade, and a pick-shaped point lay diagonally inside. He was so used to opening caches, emptying out what he wanted, and leaving the rest, he hadn’t really noticed it. Beside the axe was a small bag of climbing picks, useful supplies if he had to climb down anything steeper than the shale drop.

“Uh, you want me to become an axe murderer?” he asked. “Or a lumberjack?”

“No genius, I want you to break down that fence, firefighter style. You said your knife couldn’t do it, and a rock couldn’t. I stole that for you, man.” It occurred to Keith that Lance probably stole the radio too. The gesture seemed really sweet.

Lance cleared his throat with a cough. “Listen, a couple days ago, the lookout at Green Lion went off the grid. I don’t even know if he’s back yet, I’m so out of the loop. Pretty sure HQ’s been leaving me messages too. What I’m saying is, make this shit count.”

Keith’s heart swelled with cocky bravado. “Balmera Station won’t know what hit it.”

Running through the forest towards Balmera Station, Keith probably did look like a crazed axe murderer. He had no choice but to move fast because dawdling might give the Garrison a chance to hide any evidence of their activity in the area. Whatever they were up to, Keith wanted to catch them red handed.

Trees and bushes blazed by as Keith retraced a familiar path of Balmera Valley. He stopped only for a stranger, guttural cry echoing in the distance. Heart pounding, he reported it to Lance.

“I just a heard a weird noise,” Keith said. “Sort of like a honk or a bark--”

“Could be an elk,” Lance said. “Or it could be someone trying to spook you into calling me so they can figure out where you are.”

Keith continued in silence. He vaulted down the shale drop, sprinted past the lake, and batted away branches of evergreen until he reached his destination. The fence loomed above him, haunting and mysterious as ever. Keith’s eyes scanned beyond the fence, searching for any sign of movement. But he heard and saw nothing. The entire area seemed deserted.

Mouth tasting like copper, heart pounding with no rhythm, Keith dropped the axe and brought his Bayard to his lips.

“I’m gonna be honest. I’m scared to keep going. I feel like I might be walking into a trap or something,” Keith said. He placed his free hand on the fence, intertwining his fingers with the links as he did when he first found it weeks ago. “Have you ever felt like you were on the brink of making a decision you can’t take back? Like, do or die?”

Lance chuckled. “Yeah. I mean, no life or death situations, but I get it. The pressure, the fear. Except I’ve always been on my own. You’re not alone, Keith. Keep your radio on. Just hold down the call button the whole time. It’ll be like I’m right there with you.”

Suddenly, every single one of Keith’s doubts vanished. He wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

The Bayard stowed in his pocket, Keith picked the axe back up with two hands. He wedged the small pick on the back of the axe blade and heaved on the handle. It took three tries to completely wrench the lock off the door. The entire structure rattled in protest, causing birds nesting nearby to take flight in a bluster of movement. Once the lock was removed, he waited again, axe at the ready, just in case from Garrison crony came running. He didn’t know what he would do if he saw a person leap out at him from the bushes. Part of Keith was afraid to find out.

No one came to investigate the noise. No one appeared. Somehow, that made the prospect of entering more daunting.

“I’m going in,” Keith whispered into his radio.

“Be careful.”

Keith tread with light, deliberate steps as he opened the fence door and stepped inside.

At first, it looked like Balmera Valley was no different inside the fence than it was outside. Just trees and faded dirt paths. But as Keith continued, the evergreens few more sparse, the ground more sloped. He was walking downhill into the belly of a valley that had been stripped of its vegetation. The trees had to be cleared away deliberately, but for what?

Balmera Station wasn’t the state-of-the-art Garrison airfield Keith had envisioned. But it wasn’t an innocent campsite either.

A tower with a long antenna sat at the very bottom, with a control panel beeping and whirring at the base, and a small light blinking at the antenna’s tip. It reminded Keith of the type of tech the Garrison _might_ use, but it looked older and dingy compared to what he remembered seeing in Garrison installations. Even so, compared to the obsolete technology Keith had relied on as a fire lookout, the tower was intimidatingly advanced. What could it be for? Was it sending information, or receiving it?

Beside the tower, a portion of land was sectioned out in a perfect grid using string and small posts. Why on earth ( _god_ Lance was rubbing off on him) would the Garrison waste time divvying up dirt?

Off to the side of the tower and the grid was a large tent. The tent flaps were unzipped and open, revealing a vast interior. All the answers to Keith’s questions were probably hidden inside.

“What’s it like?” Lance asked through the radio. “C’mon, I’m dying to know.”

“There’s a huge tower,” Keith replied. “It looks like...I don’t even know. A giant radio antenna. A communications hub. We never spotted it because the valley dips so low. It was hidden beneath the tree line.”

“Jesus, I never even thought of that. It’s been under our noses the entire time.”

“The ground is all blocked off in a grid,” Keith continued. “And there’s a tent...I’m going to check it out.” He put away his axe and took out his flashlight. Time to start the real investigation.

It was immediately clear that the tent was empty, yet Keith had never felt more vulnerable. If he was caught here, how would he explain it away? And if he was detained, how would Lance come to his rescue? The answer to both questions was that he couldn’t explain it away, he couldn’t be rescued. Keith just had to take his chances.

The tent reminded Keith of his own lookout--messy, disorganized, cluttered. There were two cots, one with sheets hanging off the edge and one that had no sheets at all. Various items were stacked along the tent walls, like canned food, discard equipment, and clothing. The entire structure smelt stale, and the cot mattresses were coated with dust. Whoever lived in this tent hadn’t slept in it recently.

At the back of the tent was a desk covered in loose documents and manilla folders. Keith advanced slowly, knowing full well that the deeper he went, the less safe he was. He carefully scanned the documents on the desk. _Elk movement patterns...social structures...is that what this is all for? To study elk?_ Skeptical, Keith sifted the papers around carefully to get a better look at what was hidden underneath.

Beneath the messy stack of papers was a manilla folder with the name KEITH KOGANE written on it in sharpie. Dread choking his throat, Keith lifted the folder from the desk and flipped it open. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

> *******OBSERVATION REPORT*******
> 
> **Subject: Keith K**
> 
> **Age: 21**
> 
> **Program Status Review: 10 Weeks**
> 
> **Observational Traits:**
> 
> **\- Survivor’s guilt**
> 
> **\- Susceptible to influence**
> 
> **\- Hot-headed**
> 
> **\- Prone to hallucinations**
> 
> **Susceptibility to Manipulation: 8/10**
> 
> **Subject Overview:**
> 
> **Subject has fully engaged LM. Trust yet to be scientifically proven, though all signs point towards full cooperation and codependency. Ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is suspect.**
> 
> **Subject may be aware of test. Suggested course of action: end study if subject leaves tower.**

Keith didn’t entertain any illusions about himself, good or bad. But he didn’t believe himself to be prone to hallucinations, or susceptible to influence. Seeing those words in this report, printed in clean black and white, made him question if maybe he was both of those things and just didn’t know it. The report had certainly gotten the part about being guilt-ridden and hot-headed right.

“There’s a file here,” he reported through the Bayard. “It’s full of facts about me.”

“Like what?” Lance said.

“Stuff I didn’t tell you,” Keith said, growing cold. “Stuff I didn’t even think was true.” Lance didn’t respond to that. He closed the folder and shrugged his backpack off one shoulder to take it with him.

> A second manilla folder was sitting right underneath his. And it was labeled LANCE MCCLAIN.
> 
> *******OBSERVATION REPORT*******
> 
> **Subject: Lance M**
> 
> **Age: 20**
> 
> **Program Status Review: 10 Weeks**
> 
> **Observational Traits:**
> 
> **\- Eager for socialization**
> 
> **\- Self-doubt**
> 
> **\- Possibly hyperactive**
> 
> **\- Prone to exaggeration, lying**
> 
> **Susceptibility to Manipulation: 4/10**
> 
> **Subject Overview:**
> 
> **Subject continues to cooperate, though won’t reveal full details of relationship with MH. Does not function well in solitude. Subject to standby and await orders.**

Keith saw the initials MH, immediately filled in the blank, and jumped to the worst conclusion. “You never told me you and Matt Holt had a thing.”

Lance made an incredulous noise. “What? Huh? Because we didn’t. The fuck makes you think we did?”

“It’s written right here.”

“Written where?”

“It also says you’re with them.”

“What?” Lance now sounded outraged. “I’m not with them. Of course I’m not with them. I’m with you ride or die, pedal to the metal. Whatever they’ve got about me in there isn’t true.”

“Then why is it printed here in black and white?”

The tone of Lance’s voice grew shaky and wild. “Beats me! I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what that paper says. What I do know is that the moment we stop trusting each other, they get the advantage. Whoever they are. Working together is the only thing we’ve got going for us, Keith!”

Now that was a distressing line of thought. Could the file have been planted in order to drive a wedge between Keith and Lance? The two fire lookouts working together probably posed a threat to whatever bullshit operation the Garrison was doing. The trouble was that would mean they knew he was coming to investigate Balmera Station, they knew he was hot on their trail.

He shook his head. That wouldn’t work. According to Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation was right. And Lance working with the Garrison was simpler than the Garrison planting false reports just in case Keith came looking. Didn’t it?

What Occam’s Razor didn’t bargain for was just how deeply Keith had grown to rely on Lance, how deeply he cared for him. It didn’t matter that Lance’s duplicity was a simpler explanation. Keith made the conscious decision to trust Lance long ago. For better or for worse, he cast his doubts aside. He couldn’t allow his judgement to cloud now.

“I’m heading back,” Keith said. “I just...I just need to get out of here before someone finds me.”

Lance exhaled, still thoroughly rattled by what Keith said. _“Burn it all down!”_ His cracked with anxiety and fright. “Wipe the whole place off the fucking map!”

“No,” Keith cautioned. “You’re right Lance, the Garrison is probably expected me to do this and they’re trying to pit us against each other. Breaking in was risky enough. Let’s not get carried away.”

Through the green Bayard, he heard a clipped dial tone. Lance had stepped away from his radio, and Keith’s illusion of safety with him. He didn’t wait for Lance to come back to vacate the tent and hurry back up the path, away from Balmera and its mysteries.

When Keith cleared the fence, he released the breath he was holding. Finally he was--

_BOOOOOOM._

A cacophony of sound resounded behind him, spooking Keith out of his skin and sending him to his knees. Gasping, Keith was surprised to taste smoke on the back of his tongue. He whirled around to look back towards Balmera Station and saw a dark orange plume of smoke unfurling above the treeline. He stared, frozen on the ground, awe-struck by the rippling fumes. If Keith was slower, if he spent longer in the camp, then he’d be dead. Or maybe the timing was intentional. Maybe...

 _“What the fuck is going on, Keith?_ ” Lance hissed through the radio. “I thought you said not to get carried away!”

Of course Lance could see this too. His ears were still ringing when Keith yelled into his radio. “It wasn’t me!” The scent of burning grass and smoke already began to choke Keith’s throat. He coughed into his arm. “There was an explosion right after I cleared the fence. I’m being set up.”

Lance made a desperate noise. “What do we do, what do we do, _what do we do_?”

“Call it in,” Keith said. His voice was growing more hoarse by the minute. “Just like you normally would. That’s your job, right?”

Keith ran away from Balmera Valley faster than he ran to it. He didn’t know what caused the fire, the explosion, but he didn’t want to risk getting swept up in it. Besides, Red Lion Lookout was the tallest, safest point in the area. If he was going to get a better look at this new fire, he needed to get to higher ground.

After he scrambled up the stairs to his lookout, Keith leaned against the rail to catch his breath. No matter how much he panted, he felt like he couldn’t get enough air. Clutch his chest, heaving, Keith finally looked up and scanned the horizon.

This was not like Burt. This wasn’t the type of fire Keith could stare into and find piece. It was angry. It was unruly. It was destruction. Thinking of the beautiful lakeside evergreens, the flowers and the shrubs, burning into ash, Keith retreated inside. It was too horrible bear.

He sat at his desk, his conspiracy clippings and notes splayed out in front of his window, the new plume of smoke gaining momentum in the distance. Keith opened his notebook to a new page. Finding he was too frazzled to write, he started to flip through his old entries. Back when he didn’t like Lance all that much. Back when about half of his thoughts were consumed by Shiro.

Shiro. Keith had barely written about him since that fated encounter by the lake. And he hadn’t really thought much about him either. This sort of betrayal was supposed to bring on another wave of survivor’s guilt, but Keith felt burned out. Numb. His heart had been through too much in one day to hurt over this.

Confused by his own lack of sadness, Keith looked at his conspiracy map. Did any of this matter? Would it really be so bad if Keith stayed put in his fire lookout and let the Garrison or the scientists or whoever was in the park get on with it? He could go back to licking old wounds, mourning the long dead.

Back to before he came to Altea, before he met Lance.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the forest begins to burn, Keith dives head first into the unknown to finally discover the truth behind the summer's strange happenings. But the truth he finds isn't the one he expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! I know, I'm the worst at updating. But a few recent comments spurred me to look at my drafts for the last three chapters and realize just how damn close I am to completing it. Currently putting the finishing touches on Chapters 9 and 10. Hopefully I'm not lying when I say this story will be completed SOON. 
> 
> Thank you for all of your lovely comments. They really do encourage writers like me to pick up old stories where we left off. 
> 
> Content warning: semi-graphic descriptions of corpses, claustrophobia.

> **Day 69**
> 
> **It’s official. Burt and the Balmera fire have combined into one. Lance says this is an unmitigated disaster. For the first time in its history, Altea will burn. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it.**
> 
> **Not sure how much longer I’ve got here. Lance estimates we’ll evacuate by the end of the week. Still, I want to stay. I can’t leave unless I know the truth. Shiro once told me that the truth was worth fighting for. It wasn’t those exact words though. ~~I wish I wrote them dow~~**
> 
> **What am I supposed to do on the outside? Where am I supposed to go?**

Ever since the second fire began, the Altea sky was a light shade of burnt orange. Unlike Burt, there was no dramatic smoke stack in the distance. This fire was everywhere and nowhere; smoke rolled down the rocky slopes like poisonous mist, and toxic stench seeped into every crevice. Even up in his lookout, Keith couldn’t get the taste off his tongue. But the flames hadn’t yet spread beyond Burt’s controlled burn or the wrecked Balmera camp. It was only a matter of time.

Somehow, the National Park Service managed to send more food to the supply drop. What was normally a 30-minute hike took more than hour as Keith navigated through the woods to retrieve precious supplies. Part of him wondered why he even bothered. The lookouts would be evacuated any day now.

Truthfully, Keith went because he was feeling stir crazy. Cooped up in his lookout as danger brewed in the distance, still reeling from the explosion at Balmera Valley, it was far too easy to let his imagination run rampant. He had to get his feet on the ground and explore, even if all he found was destruction and smoke.

He was on his way home from the supply drop when Lance checked in.

“Hey.” Ever since the explosion, Lance sounded constantly exhausted. “Want some good news?”

“Hit me,” Keith said.

“Remember Rolo and Nyma? Wellllllll, they’ve turned up.”

Keith stopped in his tracks. “ _What?”_

“Yeah, I know. They apparently left Altea a while ago and then immediately got arrested for stealing a tractor from some farm. Been in the clink ever since. So I guess you didn’t kill them after all, hehe.” The joke felt forced, but Keith appreciated the effort. Lance was under a lot of pressure, and god knows he didn’t perform well under pressure. Even if his jokes weren’t great, at least he was still making them.

Keith leaned against a tree trunk to process this information. When he first began to suspect that the Garrison was up to something, Rolo and Nyma’s disappearances fit neatly into his theories. They vanished because the Garrison abducted them, their camp ransacked to destroy the evidence and implicate Keith. It made sense. Now it looked like they had nothing to do with anything that had happened that summer. They were just red herrings.

If Rolo and Nyma’s story had an innocent explanation, maybe the other things that happened to Keith did too. How was he to know what was part of the conspiracy and what wasn’t?

“I thought you’d be thrilled,” Lance quipped.

“I’m glad they’re ok,” Keith replied. “I just don’t know what it means.”

“If Rolo and Nyma being alive and well debunks your conspiracy theory, I can live with that. Pidge checked in too, finally.”

It took Keith a moment to remember what Lance was talking about. He had only mentioned the other lookout’s sudden disappearance in passing, and with everything going on, it didn’t really register on Keith’s radar. It was easy for him to forget that Lance worked with other people, that there were other lookouts traipsing around the same woods. Sometimes it felt like Keith and Lance were the only people in the world.

Lance sighed into the radio. “Good, you’re back. It really worries me, knowing you’re out and about during...all of this.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asked, looking in the direction of his lookout. He could only see a sliver of red roof above the tree canopy. “I haven’t even made it through the canyon.”

“Don’t kid around, man. I’m looking at ya. You’re taking down the stuff on your window.”

Keith’s heart leapt into a gallop, and his knees began to quiver, ready to spring. “I’m not in my lookout.”

“Then...then who is?”

Keith sprinted down the middle of the canyon. He used the shortcut through the cave to find the right trail, and with heaving breaths he climbed up the steep hill to his tower. His eyes searched for any movement in the windows, but saw nothing.

When he made it back inside the tower, Keith was alone. But someone--a stranger--had _definitely_ been inside.

His map of conspiracy theories and questions was torn asunder. The map was ripped halfway off the window and folded over itself, pieces of twine broken and disconnected, and notes strewn about the room. Every drawer in his desk had been emptied, and his sheets removed from the bed and left in a heap on the floor.

Lance cursed through the Bayard. “Damn these binoculars! All they really show is a silhouette. I couldn’t get a good look at his face. I can’t believe I let the bastard get away. I was looking right at him.”

“Even if you saw him, it’s not like you would’ve been able to capture him or anything,” Keith replied. His chest stung from the exhaustion of sprinting uphill and climbing stairs. “You’re all the way at Blue Lion.” The distance between them felt insurmountable.

The Bayard’s charger was one of the few things left undisturbed. Keith left his radio there so he could sift through the wreckage of his lookout and take inventory.

Keith filled up two pages of his notebook writing down everything he remembered keeping in his lookout, which he then used to cross check the items he still had. The hope was that he’d be able to narrow down what exactly what missing.

When Keith retrieved his Bayard again to talk to Lance, the results weren’t what he expected.

“There’s nothing missing,” Keith reported. “I mean, I’ve been searched, my stuff is everywhere. But nothing is gone. Why would the Garrison do this?”

“Dude, I’ve given up on explaining all the weird shit that happens to you.”

What was the Garrison looking for? Keith was a fire lookout, he didn’t really have many possessions. Rolo and Nyma had cooler stuff than he did, and they were just campers. To break into his lookout and risk getting caught, they must’ve really wanted something he had...except they didn’t find it. Why was the item they wanted not where they thought it was?

Keith broke into a grin and brought the Bayard to his lips. “They didn’t take anything because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. And the reason they couldn’t find what they wanted was because I _had it on me the whole time.”_

Lance gasped in awe. “Keith, you’re a deductive genius.”

“It’s not genius,” Keith said, dumping the contents of his backpack onto the floor with a flourish. “It’s paranoia!”

Kneeling on the floor, Keith separated the items so he could squint at them all at once. At first glance, nothing seemed important enough to steal. “There’s the mountain climbing picks I got from the cache,” Keith mumbled into his radio. “The axe, the Bayard, the key...you think it’s the axe they were after? They want to take my only weapon!”

“Hold on, what’s the key for?”

Keith picked up the key and scrutinized it. “I dunno. Found it at Black Lion. Figured it was for the door there.”

“Negative. No lookouts have locks.”

Keith stopped himself from looking over his shoulder at his own lookout door to check. Of course they didn’t have locks. He knew that. “If this isn’t for a lookout, what’s it for then? A cache?”

“Negative again. I have the only master key to those. I also have the key for the supply drop dumpster. Anything written on it?”

“Some letters and numbers. 554. Kind of like a code.” The numbers, written in sharpie, were almost too faded to read.

Keith paced around the room, wracking his brain for any hint of what this key might be for. It was only a guess that the key was important in the first place, but he had nothing else to go on.

He turned to the map, hanging half torn from the window. Many of the landmarks had numbers attached to them, printed small to fit in between the contour lines. Keith memorized his way around Altea, so there was no need to ever take note of the numbers, but what if…

His eyes scanned the map. Brushing open the folded half of the map with his hand, Keith squinted as he read those tiny sets of numbers. When he found number 554, Keith nearly skipped right over it. It marked a place he had traveled through numerous times, but had never really considered its significance.

Gooseflesh spread up and down Keith’s arms. “The goddamn cave,” he said. “From my first day. This is for the cave! The one with the paintings!”

“Seriously? Well fuck me. That key’s been missing since my first summer. Wonder why the Garrison or whatever wants it back. If that’s what they want.”

Keith held up the key so it could glint in the light. “Only one way to find out.”

“Let me guess. You’re going in there.” Lance sighed into the radio like a frustrated babysitter. “Should I even bother to remind you that caves are dangerous? Or that you should be careful?”

“Of course I’ll be careful. I mean…” Keith looked in the direction of Blue Lion Lookout and chewed his cheek. “It’s not like I’m alone.“

“But you _are_ alone. You’re down there and I’m up here.”

“But at Balmera you said--”

“One explosion and break-in later, I’ve changed my mind!”

“Then come down and explore with me.”

The next silence was the length of a heartbeat, but it felt like an eternity. “I can’t,” Lance said. Even over the radio, Keith could hear the agony behind Lance’s decision. “I can’t leave my lookout. What if something happens? What if someone needs me?”

 _What if I need you?_ Rather than speak the thought aloud, Keith exhaled slowly. Lance was right, he couldn’t leave his post. Too many people depended on him, especially now. Keith told himself to get a grip. Going into a cave by himself wasn’t any more dangerous or frightening than charging Balmera Station, and that ended in literal fire. He could do this.

“I’ll keep you updated,” Keith said as he left the lookout.

The path to the cave was well trodden by now. Keith moved quickly down the slope, through the canyon, and finally into the cave. Though the air looked clear of smoke, the stench of burning grass had seeped below ground. Was there anywhere in Altea that could escape the destruction?

Beyond the cave door, Keith could see the beginning of a passage lined with lion cave paintings. If he was going to go down there, it was now or never. The lock was rusted from lack of use, so Keith shoved the key into the lock and twisted it roughly. The key turned, and the door opened. Keith stepped inside and moved down the hallway, gliding his palm along the cave paintings as he walked.

A clang of metal sounded behind him. Keith whirled around and sped to the door. It was closed. He pushed on it, but it was locked from the outside. There was no keyhole on his side of the door. He was stuck.

Keith’s whipped out his radio. “Lance, I’ve been locked in the cave. This might be a trap.” He waited for a response, but only heard strange crackling. “Lance, you there? Lance? Say something!” He heard nothing but his own voice, echoing off cave walls in a dozen directions.

The Bayard had no signal. Keith was trapped in this cave with no way to call for help. What if he never found a way out? What if his radio never got enough signal to call Lance? Would Keith die down here?

Keith inhaled deeply. He couldn’t allow himself to panic. Lance knew he had entered the cave. If Keith didn’t come out for a while, he would probably send a search party to find him. But what should he do until then? Wait by the door for rescue, or go deeper into the cave to find another exit?

Thinking of what Shiro might do was useless. Because if Shiro knew what to do, he would’ve done it. He would never have gone missing. Keith had to think of what _he_ was going to do. How he was going to save his _own_ life.

Setting his jaw, Keith took out his flashlight and started his descent.

Keith knew Altea in a way he had never known another place. He could probably walk across it blindfolded, using only his memory as a guide. Underground, all the knowledge he had of the park’s landscape went haywire. He couldn’t visualize the direction he was heading, or which trees were sitting above him on the surface. Down in the cave, surrounded by stone walls, it finally dawned on Keith that Altea as he knew it was gone. When he emerged--if he emerged--it would be a whole different world.

The cave passage eventually opened up, revealing a large cavern lined with long stalactites. Despite the walls growing wider and wider, the path itself narrowed until Keith had to hug the wall to keep from falling.

A ray of sunlight shone through a hole in the ceiling. It was too high for Keith to reach or climb out of, but it at least gave him an idea of how deep he was. Maybe 20 feet below the surface? He noted that the hole would’ve been a good alternative entry point into the cave, with the right climbing equipment. It was only too bad that Keith couldn’t reach it now.

Keith’s eyes followed the path of the sunlight down into the cavern’s abyss. A single red sneaker lay on a small landing below.

“Hello? Anyone down there?” Keith heard only his own voice echoing off the cave walls. He tried to lean forward to see beyond the landing edge, but it was too far. How deep did this thing get? How was he supposed to get back to the surface?

Keith shone his flashlight down the path, spiraling deeper into the earth.

Sometimes the only way out was down.

Keeping a hand on the cave wall, he moved through the tunnel slowly. The last thing Keith needed was to trip over a stray rock or trigger a collapse of some kind. He was getting out of there. Damn it, he was surviving this.

He followed the path until the tunnel led into a larger chamber. His picked up his pace, eager to see this new room and whether or not it held his salvation, until his eyes adjusted to the change of light. Amidst the rock, a mangled figure lay on the floor, half obscured by shadow.

Keith recognized the figure for what it was before he exited the tunnel. But he refused to believe it, refused to let the thought congeal into something substantial, until he got closer. Until he was dead certain.

At the base of the wall sat a tower of rubble, bathed in sunlight trickling down from the hole in the cave ceiling. Looking up, Keith recognized the passage he walked through earlier. That means the lonely sneaker he saw was lying 30 feet above him, on that landing.

He could envision the scene in his head: an inexperienced climber trying to rappel down that narrow shaft, losing a sneaker, pulling down a shower of rock as they fell deeper and deeper into the earth. And when Keith finally emerged from the tunnel, he saw evidence that he was right.

A shriveled pair of skeletal legs, one foot wearing a red sneaker and one without, peeked out from beneath the rubble. A thin hand wore a Garrison wristband, the kind they gave out to interns in the science and tech departments. The rib cage, neck, and skull were completely covered in rock, but Keith could see the dusty orange and grey shirt the body was wearing. He owned one just like it--Garrison standard issue.

Keith covered his mouth and backed into the cave wall. He searched for another tunnel, any way out. That was when he saw the other body.

It was the skeleton of an older adult. The legs were bent at odd angles, the bones clearly broken. It looked like they fell too, but perhaps were conscious enough to crawl away a few feet. Glasses with shattered lenses lay discarded to the side. He didn’t know if the dark patches in the cave floor were three year-old blood stains or dirt. After three years of decomposition and wear, it was impossible to tell.

Matt and Sam Holt. They never left Altea. They never made it that far.

Waves of bile rose in Keith’s throat, but he swallowed each one. He wasn’t going to double over and get sick. He had to find a way out. No way in hell was Keith Kogane, hotshot Garrison pilot, going to become the third victim to die in this wretched tomb. Not when Lance was waiting for him on the outside.

Carefully, Keith stepped over Matt. God, that kid must’ve been small for his age. He tiptoed over Sam as well, forcing himself to look down to make sure that he didn’t accidentally disturb his body. His eyes quickly grazed over Sam’s sunken lips and bared teeth before darting back to the wall. During his short-lived career as a Garrison pilot, Keith never actually saw action. He’d never seen a dead body before. Shiro had told him once that the first time was always a shock, but it got less intense the more you looked. But he wasn’t strong enough to stare death in the face, not like Shiro, and he didn’t know if he ever would be.

Keith left the chamber containing the Holts to walk down a narrow passageway. It was a dead end. He turned to go back, to search for some other way out, when he felt a faint breeze on the back of his neck. He was close to the outside. He just needed to create his own escape.

The human body was capable of amazing things. On another day, in different circumstances, Keith might not have mustered the strength to budge those rocks a single inch. But today, he clawed at the wall with enough force and strength to immediately dislodge the biggest stones. They started to fall away, revealing cracks of sunlight. He was claustrophobic and suffocating and terrified, and he couldn’t--no, _wouldn’t--_ stand a single second in that cave.

Keith saw red.

He clenched his fists, thinking of Altea, of Lance, of all the Garrison bullshit he went through to get here, and struck the wall as hard as he could. The rocks began to crumble, and light flooded the cavern, blinding Keith. He stumbled out with his eyes closed, gasping and coughing.

Free from the cave, it’s damp air and tight walls, Keith sank to his knees, heaving, and opened his eyes to stare at the sky. Even browned by smoke, it was a beautiful sight.

Keith sat for a while, too drained to move or speak. He remained still not just to catch his breath, but also because he knew what he had to do next. With a feeling of dread, he pulled out his radio.

The green Bayard had never felt heavier. Clearing his throat, he made the call. “Lance,” Keith said. He tried to steady his breathing, steady his voice. “Lance, you there?”

“Yo!” Lance answered. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you again. Didn’t get trapped in the cave, didja?”

Keith inhaled through his teeth with a sharp hiss. “Are you sitting down?”

“Pssht, I’m always sitting.”

“Lance.”

There was a loaded pause on the line. “Okay. Definitely sitting. What is it?”

Keith closed his eyes. Lance wouldn’t want to be babied by anyone, least of all someone he once saw as a rival. He had to hear the news straight. Even if it hurt.

“I found the Holts. I found both of them. Together.” His voice began to shake. He could hear Lance breathing slowly on the line. “They’re dead, Lance. We need to call a rescue team or something to get them out, alright? Can you do that?”

At first, Keith heard nothing. He waited with baited breath for Lance to say something, anything. And then he heard a gasp of horror.

“You hear what I’m saying?” Keith said, a bit more loudly. “Matt and Sam Holt are dead. Their bodies are sitting in the bottom of that cave. We can’t leave them there.”

At this point, it started to feel like Keith was talking aloud to no one at all. But rambling helped Keith think more clearly, and even though he doubted Lance was truly listening, he continued to put the pieces together. He spent a large chunk of the summer trying to explain strange events. Spitballing theories was second nature now.

“You said they left suddenly before the summer ended, right? But they didn’t take any of their stuff, and they never told you they were gone. Did you ever think about why that was? I thought it was because the Garrison made them but now...I don’t think they intended to disappear.”

Keith thought of the notes written by the former lookout, Shay. There were no dates, so he couldn’t be sure when they were written. But she did mention taking leftover belongings found in an empty lookout. There was no proof, no proof at all, but he felt certain that she had found Sam and Matt’s stuff. And then there was Matt’s backpack, hoisted in the trees in a way that suggested Matt was coming back for it later. Why do that if he was planning to leave?

“I think they tried to enter the cave through a new passage,” Keith continued. “Maybe they lost the key and needed to find a new way inside. However it happened, they tried climbing down a steep shaft and the whole thing came tumbling down. It was an accident. A tragic mistake.”

On the other end of the line, Lance swallowed audibly. Keith would’ve given anything to be able to look at his face so he could figure out how his friend was feeling.

“I should’ve realized…people don’t just vanish in thin air,” Lance said. His voice started quiet, but grew loud and unsteady the more the news sank in. “I should’ve checked on them more. I should’ve asked more questions. I’m supposed to be the safety guy! That’s what I’m here for, but I couldn’t even do that! People died on my watch, holy fucking SHIT!”

“It’s not your fault!” Keith shouted. His voice cut through the canyon in a twisted echo. “Do you think we can get help?”

Lance’s responded with pure anguish. _“They’re not going to pull dead bodies out before the live ones!”_

A sense of deja vu washed over him. Keith’s voice sounded like that when he heard the news about Shiro. How did the person who told him the news handle his reaction Keith didn’t remember; the entire memory was blurred by his own grief and rage.

Keith swallowed. “I’m sorry, Lance. I’m so sorry.”

“You should get back to your tower, pack your stuff,” Lance instructed. “Tomorrow all lookouts are reporting to Blue Lion for extraction. I think--I think I need to be alone.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith evacuates Red Lion Lookout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of this is being seen by an editor before I'm pushing it out there, so please forgive any mistakes you find. I've read this over like five times and I know I've forgotten something.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy! Final chapter coming real soon.

> **Day 70**
> 
> **Supposed to be airlifting out soon. Today’s the day.**
> 
> **Haven’t heard from Lance. Not sure if it’s because he’s really busy with the evac or if it’s because of what happened. ~~I don’t even know What if I~~ He should probably call me first. **
> 
> **I wish my windows weren’t so goddamn big. I hate seeing the forest burn in every direction I look.**

When Keith laid down on his bed, he could almost pretend that Altea was still the beautiful, tranquil paradise it used to be. He had already packed the essentials in his backpack. His map, his bedding, and even his journal would stay behind and burn with everything else. Soon Lance would call, and Keith would evacuate and leave behind Altea and its secrets forever.

Fire was both an ending and a beginning, but when an entire nature reserve was crumbling to pieces around him, it was difficult to imagine how anything could begin again. Keith didn’t think he could keep sitting around helplessly while the flames slowly crept closer and closer.

As if it could read Keith’s mind, the Bayard lit up.

“Hey,” Lance said.

Keith sat up on his bed and removed the radio from its charger. “Hey. How are things?”

“Uh, hot and fiery. Been flying since sun up to help get campers and rangers out of the danger zone. Lookouts are next, so you should head to Blue Lion. Red’s got no decent landing area for me. Do you remember, the cable car?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Keith looked out the window in the direction of Blue Lion, where he could just barely make out the silhouette of the cable car line leading him to the secluded lookout.

“Great. Better head there ASAP before the fire spreads into your sector. I mean it--it’s hard enough to breathe just with the smoke. Once the flames actually get there--”

“I’m toast,” Keith finished. He cleared his throat. He hated bugging Lance like this, but after the fiasco with Rolo and Nyma... “Did you--look, I know you’re busy, but have you--”

“Yeah, I reported what happened to Matt and Sam,” Lance said, the cheerfulness in his voice disappearing. “Obviously, with this whole fire thing, it’s going to be a while before they can do anything about it.”

“If they do anything about it.”

Lance sighed, like he wanted to argue with Keith on that point but was too drained to do it. “Welp, hurry on up and get your ass over to Blue. It’s time to go.”

Keith didn’t need to be told twice. He pocketed the Bayard, grabbed his backpack. The door swung shut behind him, and Keith turned to look at Red Lion Lookout for one last time--

\--only to notice an object was taped to his lookout door. It was an old iPod with a set of ear buds and a note with Keith’s name on it.

Keith spun in place, searching for any signs of an intruder. All he could see was smoke choking the tree canopy and rolling over the cliffs. When could this have been planted on his door? Keith didn’t hear anyone climb up the lookout stairs last night, nor did he see anyone this morning. Not that he was paying close attention. Under the cover of smoke and the crackling of flame, it must’ve been easy to sneak up to Keith’s lookout in secret. As if Keith needed another reason to feel uneasy traveling through a burning forest.

His curiosity proved stronger than his desire to leave. Bracing himself for the unexpected, Keith slipped on the ear buds and clicked the playback button.

After a short crinkle of static, a youthful, yet matter-of-fact voice began to speak.

“Let me start by admitting upfront that I got carried away. My only defense is that I had good intentions. Oh, and that you’re really, really gullible when you’re freaked out.” The voice audibly inhaled. “Lance knows me as Pidge Gunderson, the guy stationed at Green Lion Lookout. But my real name is Katie Holt.”

Keith paused the recording and fumbled with his radio. If this was going where he thought it was going, he had to tell Lance immediately.

“Yo, have you picked up the guy from Green Lion yet?” Keith asked.

“Negative,” Lance answered. “I’m swinging around soon.”

“You’re not gonna believe this--”

“Look, Keith, my buddy my pal, I don’t really have the bandwidth for conspiracies right now, being surrounded by flames and all.”

“I get that, but you have to-”

“Dude, no. God, I would rather be doing anything but this.” Lance sighed. “There’s going to be a debrief back at HQ. Why don’t you tell me all about it then?”

Keith’s heart fell, but he understood. “Alright. Fly safe.”

“Will do. Lance, out.”

Keith stared at the Bayard for a long moment before putting it away. Lance needed to focus on his job airlifting people to safety. Besides, Blue Lion was a hike even on a nice day. If Keith was going to survive, he needed to get going. Now.

He replaced the ear buds and pressed play again. On the recording, Pidge cleared her throat.

“Ok, so uh, my dad and my brother were a part of the Garrison’s research division. They were supposed to study soil and deer migration patterns at Altea Nature Reserve, but they never came home. Their names were Matt and Sam Holt, and I’ve been trying to find them ever since.”

As Keith journeyed into the dying woods, Pidge began to tell him a story. The story of a girl who lost half of her family overnight, and then got completely stonewalled when she looked for answers. Pidge didn’t provide any concrete details about how exactly Katie Holt infiltrated the Garrison. Probably a good idea, since the Garrison higher-ups could use a recording like this as evidence. But she made it into the organization under a new name, got herself assigned to Altea.

Once arriving at Altea, Pidge essentially abandoned her fire lookout duties so she could take the search to the ground. Had Pidge spent any time at all at Green Lion Lookout? She must’ve almost immediately vacated her own tower to set up a new HQ in Keith’s area, where her father and brother had studied the soil at Balmera. Lance figured out Green Lion Lookout was empty eventually, but all Pidge had to do was claim she was camping to get him off her back. It must’ve been so easy.

On the recording, Pidge sighed. “I hate everything to do with camping and hiking. Nature is the worst, and it makes my sinuses feel all weird. But I endured it so I could get a position here. I had to find to them. You understand that, right Keith? I know you’ve lost someone. If you had a chance to find him, wouldn’t you take it?”

She paused, letting the question hang in the air before it settled on Keith’s shoulders like a heavy blanket. It was a good thing Pidge wasn’t there in person; he didn’t have an answer for her. Maybe when he first arrived he’d know what to say, but now? Things were different.

“My search wasn’t going anywhere cooped up in my lookout,” Pidge continued. “I started exploring, scavenging whatever equipment I could find. I was able to hack into Lance’s radio frequencies and started listening in. I swear I wasn’t being a creep. I just wanted to avoid the other lookouts, and it was easiest way to track where everyone was.” Pidge paused. “But everything changed when you found Matt’s backpack.”

The chain of causality was becoming clear. Keith found Matt’s backpack. Pidge started monitoring activity near Red Lion to follow the trail Keith uncovered. Keith found Pidge’s notes. Pidge panicked.

“I actually am sorry for hitting you,” Pidge said on the recording. Remembering the sensation of falling unconscious and crumbling to the forest floor, Keith rubbed the back of his skull. “I shouldn’t have done that. I had been stealing supplies from Balmera Station, and I was using the backs of old files to take notes on the stuff you said. I thought eavesdropping on you would help me narrow down my search for Matt and Dad. I was afraid you’d find or say something important and I would miss it, so I recorded _everything._ I didn’t mean for you to find those files, or jump to the conclusion that the Garrison was watching you. But when you did...I thought it was an out. I thought I could use it to convince you to stay in your lookout and out of my way. Kind of like a Scooby Doo villain.”

Pidge had faked it all. Or Keith had made it up in his own head. Neither option made Pidge or Keith look very good in hindsight.

But the fire, that was real.

“Like I said, I got carried away,” she continued. “I was watching when you went to Balmera Station. You started accusing Lance about Matt and I just...it hit me that I had fucked up. I had gone too far. If I didn’t do something to cover all this up, other people were going to get hurt.” Pidge hazarded a nervous laugh. “The fire wasn’t supposed to get so big...”

At this point in the recording, Keith had made his way past the supply depot and the telephone poles. The area was unrecognizable, and Keith fashioned his bandana into a mask to protect his mouth and nose from the fumes. If there was anything Keith resented Pidge for, it was definitely the fire. Yeah, the mind games sucked. Getting hit over the head _sucked._ But this was absolutely devastating.

Pidge’s voice grew firm. “In a way, I really should thank you. I was following bread crumbs until you found my brother’s backpack. You found them. If it weren’t for you, I would have never known the truth. When the flames finally go out, when the last fucking tree in this shithole is a pile of ash, I’m coming back for my family. Then I’m coming for the Garrison. Maybe they didn’t kill them, but they covered it up. And I’m going to make sure everyone knows the truth.”

The recording ending with a crackle of static.

The path continued up a steep incline, leading to a cliff and a cablecare line that would lead Keith to Blue Lion. Eyes stringing from the smoke, Keith steadily moved forward, growing closer and closer to Lance and safety with every step.

Pidge’s parting words about going after the Garrison repeated in his mind. For her, this was a controlled burn. The Garrison destroyed her family. If she was to move on, she had to burn them to the ground, too. But like Burt, it got away from her. The nature reserve and everyone in it were collateral damage now. If he asked Pidge, Keith was sure she would say it was worth it.

If Keith told everyone about Pidge starting the fire, would it solve anything? Help anyone? She had done what Keith had always wanted to--gotten to the bottom of the tragedy that took away the people she loved. Even if Keith were to tell, he had no solid evidence to back up his story. Nothing but the iPod and the incriminating recording Pidge gave him.

Keith stopped short and took the iPod and earbuds out of his pocket. He turned it over in his hands. Forests burn, but they grow back, too. That was the best thing about rebirth; it didn’t matter who started the fire in the first place.

He wound his arm back and threw the iPod over the cliff, tumbling into the flames below.

The cablecar line swooped from clifftop across a deep ravine. Down below, Keith saw the smoke rising from the burning land. His eyes followed the line, shuddering in the wind, to the other side--Blue Lion Lookout. The bright blue of its roof was subdued against the dark orange sky. There didn’t seem to be any movement in the lookout, from a person or helicopter. Lance was probably still out, doing his thing as an emergency chopper pilot.

It was getting harder to breathe. Keith panted as he took out his Bayard. “Lance, I made it to the cablecar. I see the lookout. Almost there.” He heard only static. “Lance? Lance? You copy?” The radio crackled like a flame.

With nowhere to go, no one to contact, Keith boarded the cablecar.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is airlifted out of Altea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the last chapter. Will have another note at the end, but for now enjoy <3.

The cablecar lurched to a halt. Keith covered his mouth and nose with his bandana as he ran out and up the steps to Blue Lion Lookout.

Since the lookout was already so high up, it didn’t need to be built on stilts. All Keith had to do was climb shallow stone steps to the front door and whip it open. He gasped once he made it inside, glad to finally have stale, but unpoisoned air to breathe.

It was when he finished catching his breath that Keith realized just where he was. This was Lance’s lookout, Lance’s _room._ This was where Lance was everytime he and Keith spoke. Running into Rolo and Nyma, the attack by the lake, the explosion, finding the Holts--for Lance, all of those things happened _here_. 

One of the first things Keith noticed was the neat row of face cleansers and soaps along the window sill. Lance apparently had a solid skin routine, one he remained dedicated to even in the middle of the woods. There were no photos of Lance, or of the family he missed so much. Instead, Keith found a crude doodle taped to the wall. It was of a black-haired man with pale skin and purple ears, holding a red radio. When Lance threatened to draw Keith with chinchilla ears, he wasn’t joking. 

“You shithead,” Keith muttered. 

His eyes moved from the picture to Lance’s disorganized desk. The Blue lookout did not have a handheld Bayard; his radio was a system of cables and hardware connected to a headset and mic. Beside the headset was a half-eaten apple left to brown. Lance must’ve been here very recently, but left in a hurry. 

Keith sat in Lance’s chair and spun around. It seemed like the kind of thing Lance might do. He smiled, thinking of Lance fidgeting in his chair all day, rolling around and spinning when he wasn’t too busy chattering away through his headset. He put the headset on and spun around again, hoping to feel even a little like Lance would, had Altea not literally burst into flames.

A crackle of static erupted from the radio set, and Keith heard a flicker of Lance’s voice. 

He lurched forward and started tweaking random dials. “Hello? Is someone there?”

“What. The fuck,” was Lance’s answer. “Are you...are you in my room? Messing with my stuff?”

“The park’s burning to the ground, of course I’m in here. Where are you?”

“Literally flying through fire. Saving lives, you know. You stay put at Blue Lion, a chopper will be there to lift you out soon.”

“Listen, Lance--”

“Hoo boy, visibility is getting a little low here. See ya on the other side!” The radio cut out. 

Keith removed his headphones and replaced them on his desk. Perhaps he should start grabbing Lance’s stuff, as much as he could carry, so he could save it. No, everyone said that you weren’t supposed to grab any personal belongings in the event of a fire. Besides, nothing in the lookout seemed precious enough to save, not even the outdated radio equipment. 

He spun in his chair until he was dizzy. As he slowed to a stop, gusts of window rattled the windows. The helicopter--it was here.

Keith slung on his backpack and rushed outside. The helicopter touched down on the launch pad, its propellers beating away the smoke. 

The door on the side of the helicopter cabin slid open, and a tall figure wearing a firefighter’s mask and heavy uniform leaned out. It beckoned towards Keith with a gloved hand. He moved as if he were half-asleep, disbelieving that for the first time in recent memory, he had laid eyes on a real person. A real person wearing a mask, but a person nonetheless. It was almost enough to make Keith cry.

The helicopter propellers blew Keith’s long bangs away from his face as he got closer. Swallowing, he took the firefighter’s hand--he was surprised when his hand didn’t pass right through it, like touching a mirage or reaching out to a ghost--and allowed himself to be pulled onto the aircraft.

The helicopter door slid shut with a heavy thump, dulling the sound of the helicopter blades and crackling trees. Keith sat without putting on his seatbelt. The aircraft lurched and then took the sky, rising and rising until he couldn’t see the treetops anymore.

Beside himself and the firefighter, a brown-skinned girl with a kind face and braids sat in the cabin. The firefighter sat beside the girl and removed his mask. He had black hair pulled back in a headband, a striking square jaw, and soft brown eyes. He was also dark-skinned, like Lance said he was. Could this be--had Keith finally met--?

“Lance?” Keith asked. 

The guy’s smile slackened a little. “What? Oh no, I’m Hunk.” He held out his gloved hand again so that Keith could shake it. “I was stationed at Yellow Lion Lookout. Forgot that it’s hard to tell who you’re talking to with the mask on. How d’you do?”

“Keith.” His voice was curt, disappointed. He took a seat across from Hunk and the girl, and tried look a bit happier about being rescued.

“Oh yeah, and this is Shay,” Hunk said, gesturing to the girl sitting beside him. “We were sort of unofficial lookout buddies, if you know what I mean.” 

Shay laughed. “You don’t have to be so weird about it. I used to be a ranger at Altea. I met Hunk his first summer and well…”

“We’ve stuck together ever since. Lance has always been pretty good about keeping Shay on the DL.”

Keith straightened in his chair. Shay, the letter writer! That means Hunk is H, the person she was writing too. He could ask them about Matt and Sam and see how the answers lined up with his theories. Watching the casual intimacy between Shay and Hunk, the unsaid relief of being saved from the fire, Keith hesitated. He hardly got a glimpse of their story. All he had were a couple scraps of paper and an overactive imagination. Who was he to demand they give all of it up to him, minutes within meeting?

Maybe it was time to just let go of the mystery, to accept that he didn’t have the right to know the answer to every single damn question. Lance certainly would say so. 

Actually, where was Lance? 

Keith leaned forward. “Is Lance alright? The last time we spoke he said was having trouble navigating through the smoke.”

“Man, I hope he’s alright,” Hunk said. “He’s in the cockpit. Be pretty bad if our pilot--”

Keith didn’t hear the rest of what Hunk had to say. He stood and strode towards the cockpit.

He paused at the threshold between the cabin and the cockpit, suddenly afraid. Lance was sitting straight ahead of him, wearing a headset and goggles. All he could see was Lance’s back and an undefined shape of his shoulders. The meeting he had daydreamed about all summer was finally happening, and damn if Keith knew what to say to him. What if the easy friendship they had over the radio didn’t translate in person? What if, when they met face to face, they were disappointed in what they saw? 

It seemed like Lance didn’t notice him yet, so Keith made his move. He stared straight ahead as he slipped into the copilot seat and reached for a headset, his heart thundering in his chest. A little turn to the left, a single look. That’s all he had to do. 

He slipped on his headset and set communications to a private channel. Without speaking, Lance flipped his comms to the same one. 

“Hey,” Keith said. 

“Hey,” Lance responded. 

Keith’s arms erupted in gooseflesh at the sound of Lance’s voice. It sounded so different in person. A nervous chuckle bubbled within him, and his heart lifted when he noticed Lance doing the same. To an outsider they must look like a pair of idiots, laughing under their breaths while refusing to look each other in the eye. 

Keith hazarded a glance to his left, and he caught a flash of blue under Lance’s goggles. The moment their eyes met, they darted away, embarrassed to have been caught looking at all. 

Gathering his courage, Keith took a real look at him. In hindsight, much of what Lance told him about his appearance was true. He did have brown skin and steely blue eyes. What Lance’s descriptions didn’t account for was the sheer force of _personality_ imbued in his every movement. The way his mouth quirked when he smiled, how his forehead scrunched when he concentrated on flying, or how he flexed his gloved hands around the helicopter cyclic stick. Not to mention the dimples that deepened when Lance looked his direction.

“You need a haircut,” Lance said with a glance to the right. “And a shower.”

Keith replied, “Like you’re any better. You look ashy in every sense of the word.”

Lance snickered, biting his lip to keep himself somewhat focused on flying. That was another new discovery about Lance. When he laughed, he threw his whole body into it. Watching him try to contain it was like watching someone wrangle a fire hose threatening to spray water at full blast. The effect was entirely charming. So different from the buttoned up officers back at the Garrison. So different from Shiro. 

Keith looked away from Lance. The helicopter was now far above the forest, and Blue Lion Lookout long gone. From this height, Altea looked like a bed of coals instead of a forest. All smoke and flickers of orange, brown, and red. 

“What was the thing you wanted to tell me?” Lance asked. “Your last conspiracy theory?”

Keith swallowed, a thousand thoughts on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to tell Lance everything, but Pidge’s story wasn’t his to tell. “I think when you’re surrounded by questions, you look for patterns to find some answers,” he finally said. “I saw something that wasn’t there. They say the truth sets you free or brings you peace. I think it just pisses me off.” 

Lance chuckled, but didn’t take his eyes off the path ahead. “Whaddyaknow, even a prodigy pilot can be wrong twice a day.”

“That isn’t how the saying goes. That’s the opposite of what it means.”

“Shhh. Let me enjoy this.”

An irrational thought sprang into his mind, one too terrifying for Keith to ignore. He had stumbled upon a conspiracy theory he built up in his own imagination. What if the bond he felt with Lance was all in his head too? Was he seeing something that wasn’t really there? 

“So what are you going to do now that your cushy lookout gig is basically over?” Keith asked. Talking about the future felt like the best way to figure out whether or not Lance imagined them being friends after all this. Or--or anything else. 

_“_ I dunno. I wouldn’t call this a _cushy_ job, but it’s the one I’ve been doing for a long time.” Lance clicked his tongue. “Tell you what. How about I tell you what you should do next, and then you’ll tell me what I should do. That way, we can blame each other when things go wrong instead of ourselves.”

Keith nodded. “Uh, okay. Sounds fair. What should I do then?”

“You’re a pilot. You need to be in the sky again. I don’t think that means returning to the Garrison. I wouldn’t touch those guys with a six-foot pole now.”

“Me neither,” Keith said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He remembered Pidge’s promise to take the Garrison down and felt no doubt that it would happen. In fact, with this fire lookout gig over, Shiro was his only tie to the Garrison left. 

The question of what happened to Shiro deserved an answer. _Shiro_ deserved an answer. But Keith deserved to live, too, without a single question burning a hole in his heart. 

“I know what you should do,” Keith said. He turned in his seat and stared Lance in the eyes, mauve meeting blue. He didn’t smile. It was important that Lance understand the gravity of what he was about to suggest--and that Keith not chicken out at the last second. 

“We should get pizza,” Keith finally said. 

Lance did a double take between Keith and the helicopter windshield. “You’re joking.”

“No. Margherita.”

“I give you advice about how you should live your life, and you tell me what I should eat next?” Lance snickered once more, straining to reign it all in. “Okay, we’ll split a margherita pizza. Then what?”

Keith responded with a sheepish shrug, but his attempt to appear aloof was completely ruined by the fact that he was grinning from ear to ear. “Talk, I guess.”

“Right, because if there is something we haven’t done together this summer, it’s talking. Okay. It’s a date. Yes, I _did_ just say that. Yes, I _am_ going to shut up and rethink my life choices up until this moment. Haha. Kill me now.”

With a raging blush taking over his entire face, Lance stared straight ahead to focus on flying the helicopter. Keith left him to it, figuring that flustering the pilot mid-flight was probably a bad idea--even if it did sound fun. 

The grey and rust colored smoke slowly gave way to a clear blue sky peppered with fluffy clouds. Below them, charred forests became red cliffs and healthy plains. The sudden change in scenery reminded Keith of what it felt like to arrive at Altea. To breathe in that crisp mountain air and feel immediately cleansed of the toxicity of the outside. To feel a seed of cautious optimism that maybe this adventure will be better than the last one. 

Only this time, Keith wasn’t facing it alone. And that will make all the difference. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took two years but I finished the thing!
> 
> First, thank you to everyone who read, kudosed, and commented on this story. I'm grateful for all of your feedback. Knowing it was being read at all definitely helped encourage me to sit my butt down and complete the final chapters. I encourage you to show your love and share your thoughts with other writers. I'm going to sit down and try to respond to comments individually but...you know how I am about promising updates/writing and then not delivering hahahaaaaa. 
> 
> I'll admit a lot changed since I first posted the first chapter. Then, there had been only one season of VLD. Now there's five! Five seasons of character development and new cast members...that I didn't really get to use. Most of the choices in this fic are informed by that first season, which is why I was so mean to Matt and Sam. If I started this fic today, knowing what we all know now, it would probably turn out much differently.
> 
> I really enjoyed the subtly of this story's romance, and I hope you guys did too. It was important to me to recreate that bond you see in the Firewatch game between Henry and Delilah. They never say they are in love or attracted to each other, but you can feel the chemistry bubbling underneath every word. I don't know if I captured that successfully, but man it was fun to write. 
> 
> Also, huge thanks to Campo Santo for creating one of my favorite games ever. If you haven't played Firewatch, I definitely recommend it. Much of what I tried to do with this story was done in that game, but way better.

**Author's Note:**

> We'll put out your old flame  
> We'll build a bigger fire  
> I'll pick up where he let you down and take you so much higher  
> And if his memory comes around  
> And you think you still care  
> We'll burn that bridge when we get there
> 
> -Brooks & Dunn


End file.
